Have you ever had someone you loved and cared for do something bad enough to completely ruin the relationship you have with them? Maybe those trying to help you get through it tell you that you need to forgive and forget in order to move on. Well, I find this is so much easier said than done. Forgiveness is really not the easiest thing to give away. For some, forgiveness doesn’t mean resolution; it means something important has come to an end. For some, it makes them feel vulnerable for others to hurt them in the same way. I’m here to tell you that forgiving does not make you weak; forgiving makes you strong.
Personally, I am not one to hold grudges against anyone, but I am also not one to easily forgive. Instead of taking the time to sort out how I feel and come to a place of forgiveness, I only deal with my anger and then I push it to the back of my mind and try not to think about it. I can tell you right now that this method will give you no sense of closure or resolution.
Learning to forgive is such a difficult process because it brings back every painful memory you have and it’s easy to react to these memories and emotions with anger and sadness, especially if the person you need to forgive is yourself. Learning to forgive yourself may be one of the hardest things for people to do. For some reason, we find it a lot easier to throw blame onto ourselves and wallow in self-deprecation. It means we can accept defeat and no longer deal with the painful situation. As cliché as it is, I firmly believe you cannot move on without some kind of forgiveness. Moving on means letting go of anger, sadness, frustration and blame and choosing to be happy.
With that being said, I have to say I don’t agree with the whole “forgive and forget” saying that’s been going around forever. Forgiveness is one thing. Forgiveness can help you move on with clarity and closure. Choosing to forget what happened is what gives me the most trouble. Choosing to forget a painful experience is choosing not to deal with that experience. In no way is that moving on. That will give you nothing but confusion and pent-up emotion. Forgetting a painful experience and choosing to forget it also puts you in a position to be hurt in exactly the same way by someone else.
The reason forgiveness makes you a stronger person is because it allows you to actually learn from a bad situation. It causes you to sit down and think about what happened and why it happened so you can deal with it and make sure you don’t find yourself in such a painful experience again. Forgetting is a cop-out. Forgetting is what makes a person weak. You can most definitely forgive, but for your own sake, never forget.
