Have I ever been hurt by someone and swore never to forgive the person? I have but the swearing not to forgive doesn't work for me, I prefer swearimg not to forget, my perspective of forgiveness is different. I once heard, "when you forgive someone, it is not necessarily mean you are bound to forget, you forgive for you not for them.
The structure of the mind exist in such a way that it fixates on our most painful and loving memories, if we allow it. For the loving memories, what a beautiful thing it is, to have something beautiful to think of and fixate on, it makes the mind filled with colourful butterflies, painful memories works the same way but in reverse.
The same way the mind dwell on loving memories and makes creative imagination of it, it does the same for painful memories, the question is, if loving memories were to paint beautiful images, what kind of pictures would a painful memory paint? This is what founded the basis of forgiving people for you not for them, to prevent the human mind for reliving the horrors a human being once experience, failure to do so that might lead to trauma.
How do I handle the pain? Knowing my nature, anytime I'm hurt by someone I don't blame them for it, I blame myself for granting them the privilege to hurt me. I realize that, the moment we keep looking for who to blame or blaming someone, the pain becomes more potent. So when we blame ourselves, we can only do two things, dwell in self pity or get over it to move on.
The fact is, when people hurt us, we are the ones that allowed them to do so. We don't want to accept this because it is easier to blame others for our own shortcomings. This is what I don't do, I don't hold grudges but I keep a record of it, yeah it definitely sounds creepy. You see, I consider myself to be a work in progress and the more I learn about myself, the better I become. What teaches the best lesson if not pain?
So when someone hurts me, it makes me learn how capable I'm in handling such matters and also learn about that person's nature to prevent future mistakes. The fact is, for someone to hurt you, you must have done something to trigger their nature. It is like keeping a cat in a store filled with fish, it is almost impossible for the cat not to eat the fish, so does that make cats bad? We knowing this about cats based on our experience with them, makes us not put them in a situation where they would reveal the unpleasant part of them.
Which means I find it easy to forgive people to ease my own mind, it might be hard sometimes but I do, despite this I still keep a detailed record of their wrongdoings in order to prevent such things from repeating itself and to set proper boundaries.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Forgiveness in hive learners community.
Cover Image - generated using chatgpt
