Senior year of high school is our last chance to forgive and forget

By Krista Benson

High school: A time of prom dresses, homework, all-nighters and ever-changing circles of alliances. A time when petty differences and tiny fights between friends blow up into problems of gigantic proportions and change friendships forever.

Admit it. We’ve all been a little childish sometimes, even in the “old age” of high school years.

Everyone is familiar with the situation. Two people are fast friends, practically the same person split into two bodies. Then something comes between them. Whether it be a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a trivial argument, the thing changes, or even ends, the friendship forever.

Look back. Everyone has that friend that they lost contact with or stopped talking to because their Prom date became more important than their friends. Everyone has that one person that they wish they could talk to one last time.

Entering into the last quarter of the year — what will be, for some of us, our last quarter of high school — maybe it’s time to open those lines of communication. Maybe, if we’re really all so “adult,” we need to start to atone for and pardon the wrongs of the past.

Seniors, especially, need to start this process. We’re all going off to different lives, much larger and more complicated than we can even dream of. Whether we’re going to college, going to work or just bumming around Kalispell for a couple of years, our lives are about to drastically change. Soon, that person that you lost contact with may be gone.

Senior year is a time to start what is termed “the rest of your life.” It’s a time when you must close all those childhood doors and end all the squabbles over who got to play with the big Tonka truck.

It’s also a time when we must begin to forgive and forget. It doesn’t really matter if that one girl spread rumors about you as a sophomore, or if that guy dumped you your junior year for your friend.

What really matters is finding some closure to this part of life, and that just can’t  be done if old grudges are held and old fights are continued.

It’s time for to try remember what was good about the people we used to know and forget the wrongs that were done. It’s time to call that friend that you haven’t seen in two years and try to end this part of life in a positive way.

It’s time for all of us to grow up a little and learn, before it’s too late, to forgive.

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