Fight, Flight or Forgiveness

These blows we are feeling,
That still feel real,
And they hurt and swell with pain,
They tempt us to run away,
Or to stand and fight and brawl,
For we think it is real,
And yet we can let it happen,
Like watching a movie scene,
We can be author not actor in this dream,
Distant and observant and still,
Whilst the blows are raining down,
And your ego is screaming for revenge,
And then the rage passes,
Like an impersonal storm that dies,
And you have not fought nor run away,
You are still standing, it was not real,
And now,
With the energy of forgiveness flowing in your limbs,
You move forward again as a leader in this world.

(For me this poem is aspirational. I see that it could be possible to take this approach in all situations however challenging yet I still find it difficult to put into practice. I find that I do not run away and I do not fight but I do get hurt by just standing still. The reason I get hurt is because my powers of forgiveness are not strong enough to create a sufficiently strong 'impersonal field'. There is a point where I do take things personally even if my outward behaviour does not betray this fact. On the one hand, these situations show me the edge of my development but I also wonder about protection. There are some situations where it is sensible and prudent to not be defensive or aggressive but to have appropriate protection. To not have protection might be naive and it might over-estimate your strength. We know that in a physical conflict protection might take the form of a shield. What is the equivalent of a 'shield' in a situation where it is not a physical attack but an emotional or spiritual attack? I don't know the answer to this question but I am sure as heck going to work on it because there are plenty of pointy-shaped things out there :). Any thoughts on how other people achieve this would be welcome. Beyond the purely personal context of this poem, I do still chime with its last line where forgiveness is positioned as a critical leadership 'competence' for the complexities of the modern world. In how many corporate HR manuals does this word appear? )