You Are Forgiven, But Forgotten...?

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." --Mahatma Ghandi

No doubt about it, all of us have been hurt by another. Or, we may have been the one doing the hurting. Either way it seems that pain is a common fiber in the very makeup of human relationships. Sadly, we do agonizing things mainly to those we love. Maybe it is because we spend most of our time with them, or they are most accessible when we reach out the long arm of wrath. Because they are the ones we love most, it make no sense to turn them against us. As senseless as it might be, that is what we oftentimes carry out.

To get back into the good graces of our loved ones, forgiveness is necessary. Wouldn't the purest definition of the word "forgiveness" imply that the receiver wanted to be excused for a wrong? Asking, or better yet, begging for such? Oddly, many fail to ask to be forgiven. It is presumed upon. That should never happen. If we hurt, we must seek to bridge the pain caused. This is simple in principle, but difficult in reality. Why? Well, because many times we may feel we were justified in our actions. Possibly, we feel that others are more tender-hearted than they should be and easy to offend. Regardless, one is not obligated to grant a pardon especially if we are not pursuing it.

Even though it is not an obligation, it is believed that forgiveness is linked to happiness. Ann Landers once stated: "One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything before you go to bed”. Have you ever tried that? It may be the best thing to do, but who can fully carry this out? Maybe this is questioned because we are thinking along the wrong track with what Ann Landers was actually saying. When she said to "forgive everybody", she was thinking along the definition of the word. To forgive literally means to grant pardon or to cease to feel resentment against. Although arduous to let go of resentment, we can fulfill this daily.

What remains laborious is the notion that one has to forget when forgiving. This might be easier if the human mind wasn't scientifically proven to have the storage capacity to record 11 million books. With that amount of recollection, it is impossible to forget the misconduct of others. Truly, the brain is not a chalk board easily to be erased. Maybe it is not an impossibility, but it is as Ivern Ball asserted: "most of us can forgive and forget we just don't want the other person to forget that we forgave." How true, because we will remind the person of what they did and even tell them that we forgave them. That alone proves that we have not forgotten.

And why should we forget? If we let others wrong us and we develop amnesia each time, we will continue to let people treat us improperly. It is not the forgetting that is foremost, it is the resentment we must let drift away. Besides, Irish novelist may have put it best when he said: "always forgive your enemies-nothing annoys them so much". Hopefully, this was said in jest as forgiveness must be heartfelt for us to heal. Truly, we cannot move on with life if we hold onto the actions of others. Our forgiveness has to almost be of a selfish nature--we can't recover if we persist to condemn others for their mishandling of our hearts. May we find it in ourselves to forgive even if we can never forget.