It was New Year's Eve and I was seated comfortably in my recliner in front of the television set. A talk show host, with a resonate voice and darting, penetrating eyes, was interviewing an attractive Radio Talk Show Hostess whose daily audience reached millions of people. By any standard of measurement she had reached the pinnacle of success.

As the interview continued, the gentleman, without warning, changed the subject matter and asked the lady a very personal question. "Tell me," he said, "Do you still love your mother?" When she remained silent, he repeated the question, "Do you love your mother?" Appearing to be uncomfortable, she softly replied, "I don't discuss personal family matters in public."

When I looked at my watch, I discovered that it was a few minutes past midnight and I had missed the countdown from the old year to the new year. My inattention to the time had robbed me of the annual experience of saying a melancholy goodbye to the old year and a cheerful hello to the new.

But all was not lost because I had gained an important insight that otherwise may have escaped my attention. When the attractive, intelligent lady could not say that she loved her mother, I thought about the hidden pain that was present in her heart. Then I thought about the multitude of others of us who carry various forms of hidden pain in our hearts which, at the stroke of midnight, are carried over into the new year.

The date we use at the beginning of the year is a means of separating, in a decisive way, the past from the future. Everything we date in the previous year belongs to the past. Each event has been entered into the history book of life and remains that way forever. Sometimes the heart yearns for the opportunity to change the story and tell it in a different way. Such longings are common among those who, at the beginning of a new year, are concerned about pain producing words and deeds.

Students of human behavior remind us that we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people who sometimes say hurtful words and commit harmful deeds. As a member of this tribe of imperfect people, I confessed my need for help. So, as my New Year's Eve turned into New Year's Day, I began looking for a magic word that would enable me to leave behind the stories that have caused moments of pain and then enable me in creative
ways to make life less stressful and more pleasant. I began to ponder about where I would find it.

Fortunately I found help close at hand. When I opened up the morning newspaper I discovered that on this first day of the new year it had two full pages of suggestions for making meaningful New Year's Resolutions. Written by six journalists, they gave the reader a shopping list of over one hundred resolutions. I quickly began to read every one of them, but alas, the magic word was nowhere to be found.

However, when I turned the page, I discovered a word that was of far more value than any magic word. It was an old word - a word as old as the Bible - but rarely used in any modern day list of New Year's Resolutions. It was the word FORGIVENESS and it was found in an unexpected place - in an advice column written by Ann Landers.

From out of her vast experience of communicating with real people dealing with real problems, she felt a strong sense of responsibility to encourage her readers to choose the act of forgiveness as the centerpiece of their New Year's Resolution. She wrote: "We are all connected by our humanity and we need each other." My immediate reaction to these words of Ann Landers elevated her from being considered an entertaining writer to being a writer who possess the gift of wisdom and who knows how to use it.

If we choose to make forgiveness the centerpiece of our own New Year's Resolutions, it is important to remember that anything rarely used is also rarely understood in its comprehensive and complete meaning. This is true of the word forgiveness. There was a time when I believed I knew all there was to know about the subject, but I was wrong and it was not until much later that I began to discover new meanings for this old word.

My research took me to some of the synonyms of this ancient word. The one that stood out above all others was the word oblivion. Oblivion, from the Latin, "signifies overlooking and virtually forgetting the offense as though the offender stands before the law in all respects, as if it had never been committed."

There it was - staring me in the face with the message that forgiving also means forgetting! But I was not ready to accept that interpretation. I had just read an article by a clinical psychologist, Dr. LeCrone, who wrote: "Forgiving is not forgetting." Based on my own experience, I am inclined to agree with Dr. LeCrone. My own experience had led me to believe that it was impossible to blot out a memory that has gone through the proper channels and had become embedded in that storehouse we call the brain. However, even that did not put me at peace with the matter, so I continued my research and what I discovered was very interesting.

Mental health professionals have long known that we are something more than just a brain and a body - we are also soul, spirit and heart. This enables us to understand that while forgiveness begins in the head, it must not stop there. While the head can forgive, it cannot forget. So we must take the process farther. We must include the heart, for only the heart has the ability to both forgive and forget.

A family friend once faced the dilemma of what to do when she discovered that, while she believed she could forgive, she did not believe she could forget. She had been falsely accused of an activity that cast a shadow on her character. She was left with a wound that would not heal and a caustic resentment in her heart that smothered her normal joyful nature. It was a memory that took away her joyful spirit and left her with a caustic resentment in her heart. With no relief in sight, she said, “I just cannot forget and if forgiving means that, then I guess I will just go to hell!”

Thankfully, those were not her final words on the subject. After a painful examination of her core beliefs, she began the journey that would lead her to the goal of discovering some new meanings for an old word. She discovered that forgiveness is not just for the good or the well-being of the person who has done the harm - it is primarily for the good and well-being of the person who has been harmed. It removes the caustic resentment from the harmed person's heart and replaces it with peace and joy. She discovered that when forgiveness stands alone, it sometimes is only an emotional experience that is temporary in nature and soon fades into the background where it has little or no meaning at all She discovered that, while forgiving is a work of the head, forgetting is a work of the heart which makes it one of God's mini miracles.

Discovering new meanings for an old word is never a finished endeavor. It will take patience, hard work and an openess to the possibility that using it as the centerpiece of a New Year's Resolution will be life changing in nature. It will heal old wounds; it will be an antidote for the poison of resentment; it will help establish harmony where there has been discord and misunderstanding.

We can only hope that our attractive and intelligent talk show hostess will find it in her heart to forgive her mother so that she can say, "Yes, I love my mother.”