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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We personally benefit ourselves when we forgive those who were against us, both health and physically.
Exactly, it's mostly for our own benefit. Thanks for stopping by
I really don’t even know how men do it
It’s actually funny how men can be seen pointing guns to each other and the next minute they are having drinks together as you said
I don’t know how you all do it
Probably because we don't have time to be keeping malice, most of our brain is tuned towards making money, no room for negative energies 😁
It's good to see you online again after the Internet outage cut you off from the world 😂
You are just using scope to laugh at me
Well done🤣
Says who?
The heart of a woman is so pure that we tend to forget things easily 👌👌
Not from what I have seen 🤣 you can say that for yourself that you have a pure heart but the 2 cases that I mentioned happened in my class at the university, the girls involved never forgave each other till today and it was because of a simple problem. Imagine keeping malice for over 3 years, women excel when it comes to that 😅
It is one thing to forgive people but forgetting is another thing entirely. Our memories can be tricky sometimes, there are cases whereby you feel like you have forgiven someone and forgotten what they did but the moment you experience a similar situation, memories of the pain from the past comes flowing back like it never left. Truly we can always choose to forgive but I don't think forgetting the pain or letting go of the memory is up to us. In fact we barely have control over it.
You've said it all. That's why I think the phrase "forgive and forget" doesn't make any sense because most of the time it's not up to us to forget about things, it's not like we can wipe away a particular memory just like how we delete pictures from our phones. Thanks for stopping by bro
Not only girls abeg some guys they behave like women too holding grudge. The best to is to let go and forgive like you said it reduces stress
Thank God you say "behaving like women" 😂 that's to tell you that women are the best when it comes to holding a grudge