On forgiveness

Hatred and resentment only hurt us. But then, how do we deal with that? One of many ways, is through forgiveness. It’s not a particularly easy thing to do, and it requires a minimum amount of emotional maturity to be done properly. It’s very easy to go and say “that’s it, I’ve forgiven them” when you haven’t truly forgiven them.

So, how do you know if you’ve forgiven them? You’ll know when you can think about them, or what they did to you or whatever happened, and you can be at peace with it. It doesn’t bring any negative emotions or feelings, you’re indifferent about it.

Now, it’s very important to remember that forgiving is NOT forgetting. It is not because I forgive that I forget what you’ve done to me. One of the ways to look at it, is from a quote from Tupac.

“Just because you lost me as a friend doesn’t mean you gained me as an enemy. I’m bigger than that. I still wanna see you eat. Just not at my table.” — Tupac Shakur

Another extremely important concept to internalize is this, even if you know how to forgive others, do you know how to forgive yourself? Now that’s one hell of a challenge. How the hell, does one forgive themselves for what they’ve done? What they’ve done to others. What they’ve done to themselves. It’s extremely important to learn how to do this, if you want to be able to live a peaceful life. One without regrets. One in which you’ve moved on.

So one way to that is understanding something. One of my core beliefs, is that most people are NOT evil. They’re just lost, ignorant. They don’t know better. It was one hell of a shock when I realized this applied to me too (shoutout to my mentor, Aatik, for making me see this!).

The past doesn’t matter anymore. You did what you did based on your circumstances and conditioning from back in the day. You didn’t know any better. And even if you did, then you actually didn’t, otherwise you wouldn't have done it. So don’t beat yourself up for it. Focus on the present, and how you can improve right now, not through words, but through actions.

Forgive yourself, so you can forgive others.