Day 313 of wisdom
“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”
Marianne Williamson
Lewis Smede once said, "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." Forgiveness, as much as we think it is shown towards someone is actually for our own good. When we forgive a person the larger chunk of the benefits of forgiveness is enjoyed by the forgiver. When we refuse to forgive someone for the bad they did to us, we deprive our self the peace of mind that is needed to live a happy life, we put ourselves in situations that gives us a disturbing mind whenever we come across the one that has offended us.
Love is the foundation of forgiveness, without forgiveness there is no love, and without love there is no forgiveness. You can not forgive someone you don't love, but you must also realise that, as long as you do not forgive the person you should forgive, you do not love yourself. Loving yourself will amount to you doing everything possible to keep yourself in the right frame of mind to carry out your necessary responsibilities and live a peaceful life, and forgiveness is key to that.
Some will advise saying "forgive and forget" but it is near impossible for a sane mind to forget, except for short memories. We must learn to always forgive but we should not always forget. Sometimes, our naivety exposes us to the reasons we hold grudge against some people that we tend to find difficult to forgive, if we forget we risk being exposed to such situations again, but if we forgive but not forget we become wiser in our dealings with people and approach to life on certain issues. As Thomas Szasz would say "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget" forgive, but it is wisdom not to forget.
If we seek a better world, we all must be contributors to her growth, development and healing, if we cannot do great things, we must do the little things we can, one of which is forgiving our offenders unconditionally. As Roberto Assagioli once said, "Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation" resentment and retaliation are not ingredients of peace, neither are they weapons of development, but of destruction and desolation, our widows mite to a better world is our commitment to having a spirit of forgiveness irrespective of how we have been hurt. To make the world a better place, we must learn to forgive.
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John Kamikun.
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