Thursday, December 9, 2010

The Thursday Think Tank - #27 Forgiveness

Forgiveness


“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
~ Thomas S. Szasz

To forgive is to excuse for fault or an offense.  The word forgiveness can bring out a wide range of emotions in people.  Some find it to be a sign of weakness others an immense show of strength. What have you forgiven lately or think needs to be forgiven? Have you ever held a grudge that was taxing on you? I know I have and in the end, when I let it go, I was somewhat relieved. It seems when we don’t forgive we carry a burden that doesn’t even affect the person that we hold at fault for whatever reason. But wait, what about the unforgivable things in life? Is there such a thing?

The photo above is titled Forgiving The Bent Nail. Now that’s something I don’t know if I can forgive. I envision myself stepping on it and needing a tetanus shot. Use the photo to inspire your writing if you just can’t seem to be inspired by the concept of forgiveness. We look forward to reading your poetry about having the strength to rise above or the courage to hold your ground and not forget.

This week’s prompt, and photo was provided to us by Eric Alder.  Thank you Eric for an inspiring prompt and helping us out here at Poets United.  If you would like to know more about Eric please visit the blog below:

If you have a prompt idea that you would like to suggest or share with us please send it to poetsunited@ymail.com . We keep a folder set aside with all your suggestions and just might use it one day.


There 3 simple rules:

1. Don’t link to more than 3 poems per week.

2. Please visit some of the other poems linked here when you link to yours.

3. Leave a comment after you have posted your link.


22 comments:

  1. Excellent topic. It inspires me to write a poem which I'll hopefully submit tomorrow.

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  2. Robert,
    An interesting subject this week with Forgiveness.

    Unfortunately I was unable to forgive, explained by the words in my poem.

    Eileen

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  3. It seems to me that a bent nail didn't start out that way - it was once useful and had purpose - and never meant to hurt anyone.

    I hope people will be inspired by the idea of forgiveness. (Or at least be inspire by the picture, as I often am)

    - Eric

    P.S - It's Alder, not Adler.
    (It's a common mistake)

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  4. Waiting to read some more work on here

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  5. Not sure if my comment went through so here another attempt. It's my first time here at Poets United. Great prompt. Made me think about the importance of forgiving ourselves. Thanks

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  6. Sometimes forgiveness is the only recourse, when there's really nothing else to be done.

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  7. Eric please ...uh..fogive me? Lol no the funny hing is I went to your blog, looked at your email, made a mental note how to spell it and then still did it wrong...Pathetic I know. Anywyas sorry for the mix up I fixed it so that your name is properly spelled.

    Great Prompt btw. I curious to see what folks write.

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  8. cant even spell forgive right..sheesh

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  9. Forgivness is not a strength - too self righteous - something for the Tired Monk to work on.

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  10. love the topic,
    have fun, everyone!

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  11. "Forgive and forget" isn't that what they all say.
    Thanks for the prompt Eric.
    Pamela

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  12. Did the best I could on the subject.

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  13. Really good prompt! I was blank, till I watched Oprah:)

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  14. Thanks Eric, I find this subject a challenge, but great makes us think! Photo is great for the prompt!

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  15. what a coincidence...I wrote about forgiveness earlier today before I even saw the prompt here...must have been meant to be!

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  16. Dear Eric,

    Great prompt but my poem kept going a different direction!

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  17. Also, how are people going to learn more about Nino by visiting MY blog?

    (Ah, the perils of copy-and-paste!)

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  18. LOL I thought you needed an alter ego and liked Ninot so much that I used her name there again...? Yes Copy and paste seem to never work out for me. Short cuts end up longer than the original road I should have traveled. All is fixed nwo though. Ive had a bad spell check and edit week. I think its the holidays?

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  19. I've been writing lots of poetry about needing forgiveness for the past year now. *sigh* You see, I did a horrible thing a while ago, and at first I didn't care about the people I had hurt, but, long story short, now I do. I guess I feel the worst about how callous I was after doing this thing, which made it a hundred times worse for everyone involved. So now, I feel like apologizing isn't even enough. Anyway, I never posted any of those poems before. The people I hurt don't even read poetry anyway, so what's the point? But since this is the prompt, and I have so much material readily available, I figured it was time to post one of them. The one I posted, "Story of Begging Forgiveness", isn't very good, I think, but it's my favorite one. It's about admitting that I was disgustingly unapologetic and that I now realize, painfully, how wrong I was.

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  20. Great prompt, thank you

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  21. thanks for the great prompt... took me out of hibernation :)

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