To err is human, to forgive divine

The day you get decide to get married, you do not only marry your spouse, you also married his family; the in-laws, relatives (close and distance), friends and maybe some “outlaws”. You do not get to choose the in-laws and relatives. It comes complete both stock and barrel.

At the wedding banquet, both you and your spouse are being presented to the guests and suddenly both of you become public domain. In the midst of drinking and eating, silently, your guests scrutinised you and study you. They watch the way you walk, the way you talk and how you dress. As you mingled around the roving eyes continues to watch and see how carry and handle yourself.

After your honeymoon, words began to filter back about you. Some are good and wonderful about you, some criticised you, and some bad mouth you and some no comments. As you slowly get to know the in-laws, relatives and their friends better, you learn to differentiate who are friends and who are foes. You learn to understand them and work out what make them tick. You know who are the jokers, the caring ones, the understanding ones, the less privilege ones and those who meant well but sometime uses or carelessly use the wrong choice of words.

You may get angry at some stupid comments passes about you. You learn to cope. You can either choose to ignore those comments, choose to ignore the people who made these comments or face them and have a confrontation. Or if you are like me, talk to them politely and subtlety tells them how you feel. It may go away, it may not, but it cost nothing to be polite. In the long run you may win over a friend.

In the same way, the day you decide to blog and publish your post about yourself, your family and your inner thoughts, it becomes public domain. Your readers are like your in-law, relatives and friends. They read and scrutinised your writing. They cannot help to be “Kay Poh” (busy bodies) now and then. They will pass comments. Some are good, some are bad, and some make fun of what you write. Some will silently read your post and quietly leave.

Sure, some comments are uncalled for but this is part and parcel of the blogging. If you honestly do not believe that, then you are naive. You learn to cope. You politely tell your readers how you feel and asked them to refrain from making stupid and unjust remarks. You may want to clarify with them what they really meant; after all it can be a bad joke, a joke gone wrong or just a wrong choice of words. Who knows you may find a good friend.

We are all people who make mistakes so to forgive others when they make mistakes is the right thing to do; "to err is human, to forgive divine."