Teil I ist hier.

N: Oh yes and it’s still early, I'm still only, maybe, halfway through with my day because in an hour approximately I'm going to pick up my daughter from a concert. And I'm going to drive her to a party in another town because a friend of hers has her 18th birthday. And so of course she has to go there but there is the concert first. So I'm driving her there. Then at two o'clock at night I'm going to pick her up again to take her home and then at nine in the morning we're going to go to another place, and this is a bit of a funny story because, actually it's a business meeting, sort of. Because I am a person they invite to the most curious things and they invited me to - I don't even have the words for this. I am struggling to find the words because I never bothered to learn the English words for this. You know, the round thing with branches out of Christmas tree and the 4 candles.


H: Adventskranz.


N: Yes, what is it in English? And how do you make it, what is the word, to you weave it? Or do you tie it or just make it? I don’t know. Anyway, they invited me for this activity and I said no, no I don't want to do this, I don't see myself there.


H: Oh, I remember you telling me about that.


N: Yes, and then they said maybe we have a different activity for you. You can chop, I mean cut, Christmas trees, you can go into the woods with an axe, would you like this? And I said yes. So tomorrow I’ll be going through the woods on a snowy evening, only it will be morning and probably a forest. 9 o’clock in the morning.


H: Do you have shoes for this activity?


N: No. Do I need special shoes? I thought I only needed an axe.


H: Yeah, but probably you have to walk there and with leather sole shoes you don’t get into the woods to cut a tree.


N: Well, as I said, it's a business appointment so I hope there will be some level of convenience and comfort! Business people don’t have shoes to walk into woods. I won't be the only one with that problem, someone will have thoughtfully resolved this in advance. I might wear high heels. Well, I don't have high heels, so I can't.


H: But you don’t want to either you know, you are too old to still look smart if you walk into the woods in high heels. If you were 20 people would think, Oh, that's cute. But if you are 50 and do that, people think oh she's really stupid.


N: You are so judgmental. They will think “oh that mad old pitch” and that is something I would appreciate - hey, I didn’t say pitch! I said it with a b!


H:It doesn't want to say bean pod.


N: Why does the THING write bean pod now? It's so - it's so rural!


H: Anyway. You told me this morning that in your seminar you spoke about forgiveness.


N: Did I? This morning? The day was pretty long and it's only half over for me and in another 12 hours I will chop off a tree. This is - if you think about it, you cut a tree, so you kill it, and then you decorate it and put it into your living room. That’s a bit psycho, isn’t it? Like when people kill other people and make them look nice and put them in their living rooms. Not people I know. I hope. Theoretical people.


H:We wanted to talk about forgiveness.


N: Yes, and I am almost there.


H: I think it might be convenient - once you chop someone up and maybe someone I know - then it might be convenient to know where we stand on the forgiveness thing. So maybe you would care to explain.


N: Definitely. If you forgive someone, it gives you freedom. Because you no longer have to have these thoughts in your head, these thoughts about revenge and about how much you hate that person. So the power this person's action had on you vanishes with forgiveness. So if I kill your family, you should forgive me.


H: Well. I think I would simply kill you or hire someone to kill you.


N: I know that this is a topic where you are a bit touchy, the killing of your familiy, this is why I chose this example, so that you can, you know, fully embrace the idea of forgiveness.


H: I think you can’t kill my child, he is quicker than you are and he is also feisty


N: Yes, he plays handball, so he's not easy to catch.


H: He's very quick. That's true, but you might have an axe. So, yeah, it depends. It really depends on the situation. And if you kill my husband that would make my life very complicated. But I think that you are such a good and smart person, you wouldn't kill without a very good reason.


N: Also, it’s quite an amount of work: planning work and tidying up afterwards and, I would need a very good motive, otherwise I couldnt be bothered. I don’t have time for this, killing and such.


H: And there is fear afterwards. I think that our lives are pretty good right now so why would we end up in jail.


N: Yeah, I don't see the point of being in jail.


H: Let me continue with a follow up question. Yes, um, do you forgive everything? Just to get rid of the thoughts?.


N: Well, it's an idea. You can decide. It's no obligation, but even if it's a terrible thing that was done to you - you know, it's done anyway. You can't change that. But you can change what you do with it. And if it occupies a large amount of your brain all the time and you can’t do other things, and it always comes up again and influences you in ways you maybe don't want because, yeah it's over and done, so what is the purpose, maybe to keep that thought inside you doesn't help you. So you could forgive.


H: I think I might prefer another way of dealing with it. If the person is simply horrible, I think I cannot forgive. But I can stop thinking about it.


N: Yes, it is good that you said that because it's what I also said, I can ignore it. I don't have to forgive, I can just forget. Ignore.


H: I sort of delete the thought from my head. Exactly. And because forgiving wouldn't help, because it's still a horrible person, so why would I want to do the forgiving, I could just ignore.


N: Maybe not everyone is as good at ignoring things as we are.


H: Yeah, that's true. I'm actually very sure that this is true. But for me it works perfectly. I simply erase people. Mentally.


N: I can to this too and sometimes when worrisome things occupy my mind, I assign the thoughts certain time slots during the day and so, when my thoughts start circling about the worrisome situation again, I can tell them, no, not now, your time is between 3 pm and 3:15 pm. That works fine for me. I set an alarm clock, so I don’t forget to worry at 3 pm but I stop again at 3:15. And then I don’t think about it again until the next day at 3 pm, then I have my 15 minutes again and afterwards I can continue with pleasant things.


H: That’s a very good way. And it’s a bit psycho, too. So, this is what you learned today.


N: Yes. And what did you learn?


H: Nothing. I embraced the flu.