Any relationship sooner or later hits a stone and the word “forgiveness” creeps in. Offenses and mistakes are very common and often the person committing the mistake seeks forgiveness. But usually the other person is reluctant to forgive. Is it true that forgiveness is very difficult because we expect a lot and are deeply hurt to be able to forgive someone by heart when a breach of faith happens?
To forgive a person, you really need to believe from your heart that the apology is genuine and that person has realized his mistakes. But if the experiences have been one of the most painful ones of your life, sometimes it gets really tough or even impossible to forget them. So, if you still keep the bad memories of those painful experiences, can you really forgive that person by heart? Or every time those memories give you a recall, the forgiveness goes away?
I have a strong opinion about forgiveness, I know it is tough to be able to forgive but once you do that, you actually free yourself from those bad memories and you get to see an entirely new light at the end of the tunnel. But I have also seen instances when forgiveness is unfair and the person committing a mistake should be punished and not forgiven. No matter what the issue is, different people have different opinions towards whether to forgive or not. For e.g. in cases of an extra marital affair, some people might forgive their partners as their love is really strong and some people might not be able to overcome the shock of being cheated and never forgive. On the other hand, I have even seen cases when people say they have forgiven but they never forget and keep blaming the other person for cheating and betraying.
Even still, forgiveness is something that I strongly believe by heart. I personally have forgiven and forgotten things in my life many times. Just like God forgives us for all our sins, we humans should also be able to do that. But it’s not that easy as bad memories, painful hurts, endless tears, that we have undergone, do not let us forget things so easily. What should we do in such cases, breakup and go away or stay and give the other person another chance? It is a very confusing decision to make as we can never be sure that if you walked away, would you lose the love of your life or if you stayed, would you be cheated again.
Let’s take the earlier example of an affair, forgiveness in this situation means you need to think about being with that person forgetting that the affair never happened, which in my opinion is rather impossible to do. Usually, the other partner feels that no matter how many apologies are made, how many gifts are given, how can he or she compensate for the pain that I have gone through?
On the other hand, the person involved in the affair, usually wants to avoid the discussion when he is truly remorseful of the act, he or she wants to forget that it happened and be forgiven by heart and feels guilt whenever the blame comes.
Personally, till date I have not been able to figure out what it really takes to forgive someone. I think unless you do not erase the memory forever, the bad memories will haunt you forever and you will never be able to forgive by heart. It is said that to err is human and to forgive is divine, I guess not many people believe in this. What do you think?
