I recently listened to a speech given by a fellow student in class that prompted me to write an article about his topic. The topic was forgiveness, which is something that I think has been forgotten and often seen as useless by people today. His story was pretty overwhelming and powerful. His brother had shot him and put him in the hospital for four months, and he still had the heart to forgive him. “Not forgiving him wouldn’t have helped me get better at all,” he said.
I thought about his speech for the rest of the day and began to wonder how people measured forgiveness. It is hard for people to completely forgive others who have treated them badly, but it is something that should be done. We like to use the phrase “forgive and forget;” however, it often seems as though we have the forgive part down, but we hold on to “the forget.” A more common phrase heard from people in quarrels is “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget.” Is it possible to forgive someone if you don’t forget what he or she did? I see it more as a package; you should either do both or neither.
Another part of his speech that stuck in my mind was when he said, “Everyone on this planet is forgiven every day by God for things they do wrong, so why do you think you are too cool to forgive someone?” A very true statement but often forgotten. You can lie, cheat and steal, but two words to the “all-forgiving man,” and it is erased from his memory. To be able to forgive someone for all his or her wrongdoings is a pretty amazing thing to do. I understand that sometimes things seem as though they are unforgivable, and grudges do exist in the world. But if a man can forgive his brother for shooting him, I think if you hold a grudge on your best friend who started a rumor about you three years ago, it is time to forgive and forget.
I believe that there are more important things to worry about than bad things that have happened in the past. Some people sit around for years waiting on an apology from someone who has betrayed them. What’s the point of wasting your life not talking to someone because of things in the past? Life is too short to hold grudges, and it’s way too short to wait for an apology that you might never get. My childhood best friend’s father was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, because of terrorists. She knows that they will never apologize for killing him, but she already forgave them in her mind because she has been taught to forgive and forget. I can’t honestly imagine myself forgiving someone who did that, and to see someone else admit that they did “F&F” is amazing to me.