Forgive but don't forget

I believe we must have heard the other variation of the phrase I used as the topic of this post which says "Forgive and forget" but I have never agreed with that version and I will explain why later. Forgiveness is a very popular word and it simply means letting go of the anger towards someone who has wronged us. I am fully in support of forgiveness but not necessarily because the person deserves it but for the benefit of your mental health as carrying that anger (which is a negative emotion) for a long time can cause some damage to your mental health.

There's one very beautiful quote about forgiveness by Lewis B. Smedes that says; "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." And it actually makes a lot of sense because by carrying anger in your heart towards the offender, who is suffering the most? It's not like the offender will start getting heartburn or their eyes will suddenly fall off no matter how hard you wish for it to happen, they may not even know that you're still angry at them and some (like me) won't even care as they just carry on with their daily activities while maintaining positive energy.

One funny thing I have realized is that when it comes to forgiveness, men do it more easily than women. You might disagree but this is me just talking from my personal experiences. I have seen two cases of best friends suddenly turned enemies because one of them did something wrong, and then it turns out that it was a very little misunderstanding but both of them refuse to reconcile. One of the cases happened when I was in 200 level at the university and till I graduated 3 years later, these girls never spoke to each other again and they remained enemies.

But men's own is different (mostly). Today you will see two guys fighting and almost killing each other and the next day they are playing football together and just having fun. Again, this is from my own experiences and I know many people have observed the same thing. One of my good traits is that I forgive easily, I mean you can do something very wrong to me now and in the next 30 minutes I'm no longer angry about it and have moved on BUT I never forget. I forgive the wrong you did and we even start laughing together in the next hour but I will build up defences so that such a thing doesn't happen again.

I guess it's because I always think about the worst thing anybody can do to me and when they eventually do that (or even something lesser), I don't get very angry, just disappointed and even that dies off after some time. Forgive and forget is very wrong because why will you ever want to forget what a person did to you? How then will you make sure that it doesn't happen again? In fact, I would say it's almost impossible to forget someone's wrongdoings especially if it's someone close to you. We humans generally remember bad experiences more than good ones.

In the end, forgiveness is very important for so many reasons but the most important one is for your mental well-being. Forgiveness reduces stress and even headaches because anger is a negative energy that slowly hammers on your mental health, so I rather let it go and not keep torturing myself. Also, forgiveness is the first step towards mending broken relationships as that is only possible when both parties involved have moved on from the incident and I guess that's why those 2 female classmates of mine I talked about earlier are no longer friends even to this day.

Thanks for reading

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