Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that someone’s behavior was right; it does mean that we are ready to move on; it releases the heavy weight to shape our own life, on our  own terms, without any unnecessary burdens. Forgiveness is pure freedom and it is a choice.

Forgiving is not simply an act of kindness that we are obliged to do but it is saying “no” to vengeance; a promise to the future, and a "yes" to peace. When someone does something wrong to us, it is easy to think negative, angry thoughts of hate, revenge and retaliation, but if we think intelligently, we would realize that doing so really leads to nothing less than endless regret and burden. Is forgiving the best way to deal with the pain we feel when a person stings us deeply and unfairly?

Well, what is the alternative to forgiving? Must we freeze ourselves in the unfairness of a cruel moment in the past? Or should we find a better way?

Sometimes, we decide to refuse to make peace with the past and as a result, we also refuse to forgive, just because that feels like the easiest option. Sometimes we fall into the habit of seeking revenge, mistakenly believing it to be a better option. Vengeance is the passion to get even using bad intentions. It is the burning desire to reciprocate the pain someone has given us, an eye for an eye.

Even we try as we may, revenge will never get us where we want; it will never even the score. It won’t give us fairness. Instead, it sets off a chain reaction that ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain for as long as the will to get even remains. The escalator never stops and will never anyone off.

No matter what our weapons maybe: words, unkindness, guns, bombs, nuclear missiles; revenge locks us into an escalation of violence. It mires use in painful guilt for an unjust past. The only out it is forgiveness.  When we forgive, we don't change the past, we change the future.

Forgiveness has the power to move us away from a past moment of pain and unshackle us from our endless chain of reactions. It creates a situation in which the wrongdoer and the wrong can begin a new way; it lightens the load of past wrongs and pains that we are burdened with; it frees us for whatever fairer future lies amid the unknown potential of our tomorrow. The only way to heal the pain is to forget. This stops the rerun of pain and heals the memory as we change our vision.

Even though inner lust for revenge remains, we must not give in to it. This can push deeper endless repetition of old unfairness. When we release the wrongdoer from the wrong, we cut a malignant tumor out of our inner life. We set a prisoner free, but then we discover that the real prisoner is our self.

By Tim Pedrosa


  

Tim