We all suffer from unsettled matters: things that hang over our conscience as dings, clouds shadowing our happiness. Unsettled matters include old romances where we are not proud of our role in their end, ungratefulness towards friends and givers, more generally breakups of love, friendship or trust or perceived lack of fairness/morality on our part or the part of others towards us in meaningful situations.
Time can weaken the impact of unsettled matters and make them very slight. We may forget them and generally not think of them. But time does not remove them. They can bounce back to the forefront of our consciousness with a vengeance, like it was yesterday, in kodachrome, even decades later. The only way to remove them is to deal with them once and for all. I believe we gain by taking the time to resolve them. It may not seem to be worth the effort at first but the benefits of removing an undermining overhang on our conscience and replacing it with a vibrant, renewed relationship, or at least a settled claim will return over time joy in multiples greater than the effort or pain endured in the resolution.
Over the past ten years, I have attempted to comprehensively review my actions since birth in search of such unsettled matters and have found many of them, at least ten major ones. I have renewed contact with the persons involved and candidly have resolved all of them to my satisfaction and I hope the satisfaction of people I knew to have hurt. I have gained meaningful serenity and probably have brought the same to others involved. This does not mean that I have renewed friendship with all: I have also confirmed several times my decision to break. But at least, the matter was settled after re-examniation. I pledge to continue to identify and correct unsettled matters. I recommend it to all.
