Forgiveness

When we attempt to learn a new behavior, something we have never tried or seen others model, we can feel a bit disoriented or off-balance.  This state is termed "cognitive dissonance".  Although it feels uncomfortable, it provides an opportunity to learn a new response, to put in place a new neural pathway in your brain.  For example, if you have always put your right leg into your pants first you have created a neural highway by repetition so that the moment you grab your pants the next action is already starting, almost without your volition.  It's habit.  But you can try an experiment.  You can try putting in the left leg first.  As you do this new behavior you begin to construct a new pathway and with repetition that pathway grows in bandwidth, becoming the faster more automatic response.  Our brains are amazingly plastic in this way, and that gives us hope for change not in simple tasks but in the more serious task of dealing with crisis, anger, and stress.  Do we respond violently, or learn new nonviolent responses to old impulses?