Our traditional school of upbringing taught us that forgiving is the best policy in life! Rather than keeping the grudge within and planning to take avenge with cluttered mind, letting go and forgiveness is best thing to do. Forgiving someone is indeed a great and courageous thing to do, because it gives us peace of mind, reduces stress and anger, improves relationships, and frees us from any ego. Forgiving someone help us to be in the good books and helps in making us a better person. But I was wondering is forgiving someone comes easily? Does mere forgiving it allows a person to forget the act that brings injustice or some misdeed that brought harm us.
Forgiveness is a conscious choice that frees us emotionally and improves the quality of our life, and that is why it is such an important and big deal in life. But I doubt the fact if a person could forget everything so easily. At-least it is not happening to me. I remember one of my known one backstabbed me that results in incurring heavy losses. He always appears to be genuine and nice to me and never ever I doubted on his intention. He in-fact was close to me. But he came out to be shrewd and cunning enough to ditch me. Although all it happened in 2018, I never forget the incident. He gave some false excuses but the incident never gone away. The person is still in touch with me but not in terms that we were before. Even though I forgive him after listening to his lame excuses, and with a lesson not to trust that person again, but the incident always crosses my mind whenever I find myself in similar situation. In a simple word I can say that forgiveness is simple but forgetting is not so easy.
Forgiveness is essential for our own mental happiness and health, even if it does not mean us forget or justify the mistake, but rather gives us the power to move on and heal ourself. During the initial days of that incident, I felt the pain, but over the period of time I literally get over of the situation by forgiving the person nuances. Recently, I was listening to an spiritual Guru, he came up with similar definition of forgiveness. He underline the fact that, Forgiving is a gift to yourself. If we cannot forgive the past, our future will be miserable. Forgiveness allows us to move beyond past mistakes and build a better future. Holding onto anger welcomes the person who hurt us into our thoughts, occupying valuable mental space that could be used for peace and well-being.
To forgive, we must see the person who wronged us not as a malicious culprit but as a victim of their own ignorance or circumstances. However when we learnt that the act was full of cunning mind than forgiving does not comes easy. The spiritual Guru, also emphasizes the facts that forgiveness is not forgetting. The human brain does not have a simple "delete" or "empty trash" function. We can forgive and let go of the offense while still remembering the lesson and treating the person appropriately to protect ourself. Which I have been doing ever since suffered loss at his hand.
To my understanding, the highest form of forgiveness comes with a profound sense of compassion for others, understanding their mistakes were born from a lack of awareness. It will be easy to let go things for a peaceful life. But when the mistakes were done intentionally to harm us, letting go and forgetting never comes so easily. Rebuilding trust to the person may requires genuine change, and new behavior from the other person, which isn't guaranteed, even after we have forgiven them. A more realistic and practical approach is to aim for "forgive, but don't forget".
In good faith - Peace!!
