Assignment #17 - Smoke Signals

The movie Smoke Signals told an incredibly emotion evoking story. The movie also forces you ponder so many other thoughts that it feels like your brain is on overload. Ultimately, Smoke Signals left me with questions. At the end of the movie Thomas says, “How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left? I found this to be an immensely powerful quote. How do we forgive, not just our fathers but also anyone who has inflicted some kind of pain unto us? Is it possible? Will we know when we have forgiven them or is it the type of thing we never really contemplate doing? “How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream.” Some of us dream of forgiving people for the “unforgivable” but never accomplish this in our reality. We can lie to ourselves and to others and say we have let go of our grudges against them. But…what if we never really do? What if we have held that grudge so long that all that we have left to offer is our anger and our hatred? Can we forgive them for leaving or for staying when we know things would have been best vise versa? What if we do accomplish absolving the others for the destitution they have inflicted upon us? “If we forgive our fathers, what is left?” What if it is only fury and agony left? All the unanswered questions, how do we get the answers I forgiving the actions does not answer them? What if it’s your brother or sister that has afflicted you this way? Is it easier to forgive them than your father or mother? Furthermore, how do we motivate ourselves to forgive the very people that have caused us to feel such revolting feelings? And if our forgiveness is not accepted, how do we react? The questions without answers and the actions without reactions are some of the hardest things to overcome. It is so because how are we supposed to let go of something we never resolved? Maybe forgiveness is just a figment. Maybe some things can never be over looked. Maybe we are the only things standing between forgiveness and us. Between internal peace and us. Maybe God is the only one who can forgive. Yet even God does not forget the actions for which he has chosen to forgive. Does that mean it is impossible to forgive and forget? That drowning out the unwanted memories is a waste of time? How do we learn how to cope with the haunting of our past? The haunting of the ones we love? If we never forgive, does that make us mean or ugly? And if we never forget, does that make us weak or vulnerable? The questions are infinite but it seems the answers are few. We hunger for the answers. No. We hunger for the right answers! Maybe we have found the answers to the proposed questions but we ignore them because they are not right in our minds. Or perhaps we have ran from things so fast that we did not notice the answers. Are the answers in the mirror? Are they lost in the past? Smoke Signals wrought in me all these questions. However, it is up to me to find the answers as I have come to understand that the answers may vary from person to person.