Forgiveness

Let’s begin with one thing; I rarely forgive. Now don’t think I don’t know why it’s important to forgive. When you don’t forgive, you only hurt your self. You have all these bottled up feelings inside you and they will slow you in life. Yet, when you forgive, you say, “Okay, it’s water under the bridge. We’ll consider the slate clean.” Which is all good. You are happy, your mind and heart aren’t weighed down. And then, when you least expect it, that person does something bad to you again.

This is because forgiveness is often misheard as, “Look, you hurt me, but I’ll forget it all, and yes, when you stomp on me again, I will forgive you.” People forgive out of kindness. They are forgiving people. Sometimes people forgive because what they will lose if they don’t is just too much. So they think, “No, he won’t hurt me again.” And yet, once a cheater, always a cheater. Once a liar, always a liar.

Now asking for forgiveness. Why did you do something that required you to ask for forgiveness? When we are told to think twice about all our actions, to be mindful of them, we must look into how it will affect others.

Will it hurt them?

Are you breaking their trust?

Will it be something you will regret or wish you hadn’t done?

Thirty years from, will you be happy with this decision?

Will someone need to forgive you for this?

Because, I’ve forgiven people, when they’ve asked me to. But, “I forgive you” are three words that are so easy to say. Do you know if I really meant it? Because, if you hurt me, or do something that you shouldn’t have, it’s more likely that I won’t forgive you. So yes, I may tell you all’s forgiven but my respect and liking for you will drop to a new low. I will never look at you in the same way as before, and I will never trust you.

Then there’s the question of, whose forgiveness are you looking for? Most people do the shittiest things on earth and then go and pray before some god who is supposed to be all-forgiving. So the little boy will kills an ant, feels guilty and asks for god’s forgiveness. Then he’ll be a teenager, kill a bird and ask for god’s forgiveness. He’ll be in his twenties, kill a dog and ask for forgiveness. At thirty, he kills a cow and asks for forgiveness. At forty, he kills a man. He goes down on his knees and says, “God! Forgive me.” He’s forgiven, or at least he’s told he is.

But does he ask to be forgiven by the lives he hurt? Not the dead, who can’t forgive. But the family and friends of the dead. They can’t be as forgiving as that god. Because, they are merely human and it’s easy for us to say, “Oh forgive the man who killed your son. He knows he did wrong.” But I wouldn’t even be able to forgive the man who kills my pet. Even a pet I didn’t really like. So can a mother or father forgive the killer of their son? Can a man forgive the killer of his best friend?

To forgive is an ‘easier said than done’ kind of thing. We can all tell people we forgive them, but we can’t and we don’t truly forgive them. So as much as it pulls you down, forgiving isn’t as easy a thing to do. Forgetting, that’s what you should do. Forget the crimes people do, as you forget the people them selves. Don’t let the past haunt your present. Don’t carry your past into the future.