Forgiveness, The virtue of the brave

“Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.” ~ William Arthur Ward

In our life, we often come around people who do us some good and quite often around some who do us its opposite. We are grateful to the first but hold resentment against the second. I have seen many a times that people feels it hard to forgive others. I tried to find what people thinks about forgiveness. It was astonishing to see that people believes that one should forgive the wrong doer only because nothing can offend him more than the act of forgiveness. I was not quite convinced with it so i thought of discussing the matter with two of my great friends, physics and philosophy. I ranged them up and made up a plan to meet them one good sunny afternoon.

I first discussed the matter with Physics to which she said that, “We should always forgive people and love them for who they are, no matter how wrong they do to us because sometimes we can’t understand the motive behinds ones deed, whether it is for our good or not.”

Physics is difficult to understand and so is the thing she says. I was not quite able to understand what she said as i was of the mindset that the motive behind anyone doing someone wrong are always wrong, to which she contradicted and said, “We always abuse friction for slowing us down and eating up our energy but have we ever wonder that if there weren’t anyfriction, then how would we have been able to start up our motion in the first place.”

To this I asked her that this might be the reason but why don’t friction changes its form so the next time we interact with it while we being in our motion, it do not slow us down. She said that, “Every thing in the world has its limitation, and so do friction. Friction knows its limitation and also knows that after playing a role in starting our motion, it also have to play a role in stoping us when we need to stop. As friction knows that it cannot change itself so fast from a non-opposing force to an opposing force, it remains constant and oppose our motion, so that we don’t exceed our limit in addition to getting stopped safely at the point where we need to stop. As we have discussed earlier that every thing has an element of good in it, its just that we are unable to see that good in it, likewise, friction also interact with us, with best of the interest of us from the bottom of its heart and so do other, its just that we are not unable to understand them.” This statement of her was quite convincing but i was not fully satisfied so i started discussing it with philosophy.

Philosophy said that there are only two kinds of people in this world, the one whom you care for and the one whom you don’t. If anyone hurts you then he must be belonging to one of the above mentioned categories. If the one who hurt you is the one you care for, then you should forgive him as you want him to be happy and his action should not offend you as much as his happiness should please you. But if the one who hurt you is the one you don’t care about, then there are many consideration that we should think about before making a mind of not forgiving him. These are, why should the actions of the that person effect you as they hold no importance in your life, why should the wrong doing on anyone make you do the same by hating him and why should you not forgive that person, change him for the good as you are the one who will be on the loosing side if that person don’t change.

Further, we should also consider forgiving people because no one is perfect in this world and the action of that person might be the outcome of the miseries that the person might be undergoing. By holding resentment against that person, you might increase the pain inside him which might make him hurt you more in the future and forgiving him might help him clam down. And after all, its you who is good and not the other one so you should always do good. Further, Plato has once said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

In the end, i would like to recall what Thomas Fuller has said,”He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.”

Always forgive others as it is no one other than you who deserve the peace and harmony and try not to hurt others.

~ Love, Light and Truth,

Harshad Gupta