WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Forgiveness simply mean not letting negative events of the past define how you feel about someone/something in the present. Forgiveness increases feelings of happiness and decreases feelings of anger and grief. It helps alleviate anxiety and depression and makes you less self-conscious or insecure around others. Forgiving should not be mixed with forgetting. You can forgive someone and still remove them from your life. Forgive for your own sake and move on with your life. Carrying bitterness is like holding onto anger towards yourself or others, which weighs you down like a chain hanging across your shoulders. It drains energy, increases stress. Forgiveness is a purely psychological process and doesn’t necessarily have any real-world repercussions. Forgiveness is not as easy as to say. It’s not a cure-all process.

There are times when you forgive someone and still in future finds it difficult to deal with them or prefer to avoid at all cost but that’s very normal. Dealing with the situation can make you go through the forgiveness process all over again. Generally, people who do hurtful things, because they are hurt themselves. If we look for some explanation of their motivation by separating the action from the person, it’s possible that we might get to understand their perspective better. Whether the reasons are true or not is another point of discussion. Basically the point is that no one thinks they’re evil, everyone feels justified in what they are doing, otherwise they wouldn’t do it, simple! Without understanding someone’s motive, it’s impossible to understand them. And when it comes down to it, forgiveness is ultimately a form of empathy*. It's the utmost difficult thing to do but also one of the most important human skills. Empathy is one of the only things that separates us from animals as it gives us a foothold into morality. It’s important to let go of the emotional attachment that have developed around hating the person’s guts for so long. Let the hatred and anger wash away, let the visions of revenge and misfortune die. It’s not helping anyone, especially not you.

But when it’s we who had done something wrong, we tend to repent in shame and guilt for ever doing. How do we forgive ourselves?

Past regret can take us through a different range of emotional states. One side of the spectrum is the dark lament where we repent and feel how flawed we are. But the other side of regret is the light that shines, guiding us to a better understanding of ourselves and ultimately accepting our flaws. The slow burn of a regret carries on for years is really like a death by a thousand tiny cuts. Forgiving yourself is important so that you can move on in life. We struggle to empathize with ourselves or to have compassion for ourselves. To do that might take years of hard work towards self but once you do there is no looking back. Instead of focusing on the past of who you were, focus on the present/future of who you could be.

* Empathy means to take whatever pain motivated that person and pretending you’ve gone through it yourself and then deciding what you would’ve done in the similar situation.