85 – Coco and Miguel Shows Us How to Forgive

• History Can Represent Hurts – The movie shows a family that misunderstood what someone did generations ago, leading to the banishment of music. Poor Miguel loved music but also loved his family. While he wanted to honor their wishes, he loved music so much that he found ways to sneak around and play music. 
• We Can’t Read Minds – Because people made up a story about why Hector never came back, music was banned to prevent more hurtful feelings and more pain from music. But the story was not true. The story was not valid.  We can’t always see the real story behind why people do specific actions. So if we are going to invent an account, why not create something that uses the most positive outlook? 
• Forgiveness and Understanding – But when we invent better stories about others or learn the hard truth, we can forgive and understand others. If we can do it early in a relationship, healing also starts early. We will prevent putting artificial emotions on others and not force them to do things they do not wish to do. 

Challenge

• Rewrite somebody’s story. Maybe, someone you’ve been struggling to have a relationship with recently. You’re already mind reading, you’re already playing prosecutor and already judging their lives in ways you probably don’t have any right or knowledge to do a good job, or the proper knowledge to know exactly what’s going on with that person. So now, let’s rewrite and write their story differently. What kind of childhood did they have? What kind of pathway did they take to get to this place where they are the person that you’ve been struggling with recently? Is there another story you can write for them that will help you forgive, help you understand them better, and help you have a better relationship with them going forward? Find that one person and write them a new story. It’s not that this one is true, either. It’s not that this story will be valid. But the last story you told about them probably wasn’t true either. Now’s your chance to do a better job writing a story. See if that helps your relationship going forward.