Letting Go Without Losing The Lesson

I grew up in a Christian home and one of the lessons that constantly rang a bell in our ears was forgiveness. My parents, school teachers and Sunday school teachers would often lecture us on the importance of forgiveness, emphasizing on the fact that it is Christ-like to forgive those who offend us. Of course as children, we tried to follow these teachings. Life was less complicated for us as children, so it was easy to forgive. I remember how my friends and even siblings would offend me and it would hurt me badly to the extent that I would say that I wouldn’t talk to them anymore, but the next moment, I’d find myself talking to them. This is because the mind of a child is innocent. However, as I grew older, I realized that forgiveness is an art. Not just any one, but a complex one at that. Forgiving someone can be very difficult, especially when the pain runs deep.

I don’t know who came up first with the phrase “forgive and forget”, but it has been popularly known for a long time. The idea behind it is that when someone offends us, we should let go of anger, resentment and pain caused by that person. That is forgiveness. Forgetting, on the other hand, means completely erasing all memory of the event from your mind, as if it never happened. Many times, I have heard people say that forgiving and forgetting goes hand in hand and that one cannot do without another. Meaning, if you truly want to forgive someone, you must be ready to forget that the event ever happened. Well, I hate to break it to whoever is siding with this opinion, but I totally disagree with it. You see, parallels can be drawn between forgiving and forgetting, but they should not be mixed together.

For today’s Hive Learners’ prompt, the community asks us if forgiving and forgetting is a package deal. Can one exist without the other? Yes, the Bible encourages us to forgive others. “Forgive others so that God will forgive you.” As much as this sounds so easy, it is one of the most difficult things to do. Even the sweetest person will find it difficult to forgive when the wound hurts too deep. I try as much as I can to forgive those who offend me. Depending on what they did, sometimes it takes days, others times, it takes weeks, months and in some rare cases, years. But what I will never do is forget. I was going through my WhatsApp statuses this morning and interestingly I came across @bipolar95 status. In her words, “That we forgive doesn’t mean we will forget, you cannot just “how are you doing” your way back into my life. It is almost impossible to even forget the pain. Yes, you are free to go, I hold nothing against you. I wish you success in life, but I will never forget the pain you caused me. I’m not gullible enough to do that.

During my years in the university, people shared awful rumors about me. They were so bad that I was even impressed with the person cooking up the stories. Only to find out that my “friends” were the fore-fronters, pioneering the rumors. I was hurt. It was at that time I felt the pain of being backstabbed. At first, I vowed not to ever have a thing to do with them. I spent hours thinking of how to cut ties with them. Before the whole thing, I used to visit them almost every day, but I stopped doing that. I stopped going to their place, communicating with them both physically and online. I just wanted everyone to be in their places. I did this for more than one month. After that time, I realized it was time to “forgive.” Yes, I let go of the pain they caused. It wasn’t easy, but I knew it was for the best reasons, but I will never forget what they did.

Think about it, these are the people I told my secrets to and they broke my trust, so you think it would be wise to forgive them and erase all the memory of what happened, so I can now go back to the way things used to be, so they would now hurt me all over again? That’s impossible! Our brains are wired that way. There are some pains that your brain will never forget.

In conclusion, forgiving and forgetting is not a package deal. One can exist without the other. Our brains are channeled that way. Of course, all these are my own opinions. We are built differently afterall, so it is okay if you think otherwise.

Thanks for reading.