Forgiveness is the Jailer's Key

 Forgiveness is more of a gift to the holder than the receiver. You are doing yourself a favor when you forgive. And even bigger favor when you use wisdom to forgive. When I was coming up as an emerging artist in NYC, there were ppl who took advantage of my circumstances. Late payments, no payments, lying, breaking a contract, etc. A lot of the time, it was other struggling artists who decided to cut corners or 'be slick.' For about 99% of those people, their careers and their lives didn't work out for them. It required nothing from me. 

Let them be slick. 

Let them scheme. 

Don't plot their downfall. Don't get dragged down into their mud.

Forgive. And keep forgiving until you see the God in them. A deity that is struggling to get out of the prison of their ego. Learn to love that prisoner. 

A friend asked me if I could help an actor who was having a rough go of things. I said, 'Of course.' What I did not say was that I knew that I had worked with the actor a LONG time ago. The things I remembered were that they were exceedingly talented, very egotistical, and very, very nasty. Their main collaborative skill was belittling people in the room. Even back then, I thought, ' I wonder how this is going to work out for you?' It took me a few weeks, but I forgave and moved on. I went down my path, and they went down there until a decade later, I'm getting a GoFundMe to help pay this same actor's rent.  So I donated and continued down my path. A year later, at a party, the same actor came up to me and thanked me. They didn't recall our previous collaboration, so I didn't need to remind them. What's the point? Life humbled them. I forgave them a decade ago so I could lift them up. I saw the God who was struggling behind the prison of their anger. There was still a spark in them.

Sometimes you meet people at their worst. They're having a bad day. Sometimes people have been taught that the way to get ahead is to be the worst. 

Let it go. Find the prisoner trapped inside. Know that the prisoner is NOT the prison. They are not the bars of hatred or ignorance, so love that prisoner until the anger fades on both sides of the bars. And maybe one day we will all get out of our own prisons through forgiveness.