When I hear people talk about forgive and forget I ask them a question. Can we truly forget, do you just forget something that hurts, do you teach your brain not to remember, how do you unremember something that happened to you? I have also gotten some responses and the one that shook me the most is when a friend told me “The more you try to forgive, the more you realize how much you have forgotten with time. This simply means that forgiving and forgetting isn’t something that happens suddenly. I remember being so hurt one time that I had to repeatedly tell myself over and over words to help me forgive, especially when I remember what the person did and feel the pain, I would immediately speak these words; “Kelvin You forgive (the person’s name), You will not hold a grudge, it’s painful, but it’s okay, they don’t even need to apologise because they are forgiven”. I said it over and over and over for months. Today I can only remember a summary of what happened, the pain is no longer there, and the details that made the memories painful are what I have forgotten.
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This ain’t easy to be honest, It takes a lot of courage to actually and truly forgive a person, especially when you did nothing to deserve the hurt you got from them. And when you have realized how deeply you have been hurt, it takes strength to rise above it and not let it eat you up or bring you to a point where it will be impossible to heal again and that is the point of revenge. When we get hurt, it’s completely normal for the first instinct to be retaliation, however understanding that you will be doing both yourself and the person that hurt you a favour by not retaliating is not just maturity but also strength. At that point you don’t even seek forgiveness from them else it can lead to another form of offence, you instead forgive them not even because they deserve it, but because you deserve peace from the pain the cost you.
After my last wrong relationship, I hated the lady for hurting me at first, and then hated myself for falling for her lies, but later on, I told myself it was time to heal, it was not easy, I learned from my own experience and started forgiving her every day, it was in that process I realized the different stages of forgiveness. At the initial stage, I was hurt by what I learned and what exactly she did, and then I would always tell myself I forgave her for it. Later on I started realizing all the different ways I was hurt and all the intentions she had in all of them then multiplying it with how long it had been going on and the pain was real, but I told myself, I forgive her. Later on it grew to the point that her very existence was hurting me, and again I had to remind myself that she is human and can err, and so I forgive her, and it was after then I began to seemingly forget most of the different ways she hurt me which helped me heal and move on. Today I can remember the actions, and even narrate the pain, but the particular details that would have made me hate are the things I can no longer remember.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 178 EPISODE 2
