To forgive, not because you want but because you need to.

In my life I encountered a few occasions where I wanted to forgive a person. If I look back at those occasions I come to the conclusion that the gesture of forgiveness was not only for importance to the person receiving it but as much, or even more important to myself.

In one of these occasions this other person had do me wrong quite bad and rationally thinking I came to the conclusion that this person did not deserve to be acquitted from his "crime". Trying to be a good christian it took me some time to forgive this person afterall. From that moment on it was as if I forgave myself because I lost the frustration and the anger that occupied me.

But how does this work...? The offender gets caught and in many cases will not feel the need to be forgiven or sometimes has not even has the desire to be forgiven. In such cases the offender has learned nothing and does not appreciate the chance to do things different next time. But you are a good person and give this violator a pardon and the only one really proffiting from your decision is yourself.

So, now in an other situation there was this person who really did me wrong and I couldn't care less about that person and would very much love to see him pay for his crime. But I knew that this would not satisfy my anger and knew this person would never pay enough for his crime. The only thing that would release me from the anger and frustration was being able to forgive this person. I sought forgiveness, this forgiveness state of mind would give me peace and quiet in my heart about the matter....and it did.

In a way I did not forgive this last person because I wanted to but because I needed to, no matter if this person wanted to be forgiven or not. How about that..has this anything to do with the consept of forgiveness at all?

If the person has learned something and will not do it again then there is nor reason to make the other person suffer, but it can be very hard on the one that have to forgive. Forgiving somebody that still is destructive and still doing the egoistic behaviour it is not helping the person by to forgiving the behaviour, but even qounterproductive because you are accepting the behaviour. It is not for me to decide if the Karma is paid and lesson learned if I have not walked in the persons shoes but there is a value to every action but it is hard to figure out what it is. I might not forgive the person that was doing the bad behaviour even with all the facts but I will forgive the person that he/she has become if the lesson have been learned. Namaste

Yes.

I understand what you are talking about. I had a similar experience.

I am not Christian but I am all about forgiveness as a way to heal.

I too was in a situation where the person who "did me wrong" didn't care, and I suffered and spent so much energy thinking of possible ways I could get revenge, hoping that they exploded, ate some bad shellfish, just generally wanting them to rot.....

But I was the one who was rotting.

I was rotting from the inside out, my soul was becoming just as nasty and ugly and corrupt as their soul was. I was becoming like them. My will, my energy, my focus was bent on hateful ways to "punish them and make them feel what I felt"

The level of hatefulness, bitterness and rage I carried was making me sick. Really sick. I was my own worst enemy, and because I could not let go of "what this person did to me" I was ruining my own life.

One day it clicked.....I was allowing this person to still have power over me...they were still affecting me even though they were long gone from my life. hell no, I thought, I am not going to continue to let them affect me....they had done enough damage.


I was a miserable mess all because I had trusted someone, they betrayed me, and I could not see past my own sorrow and anger to realize that they did not even know how much they had hurt me. Getting revenge on them would not have satisfied the dark hole they had left in my heart. There was nothing that could have filled up that hole.....no amount of revenge would have been enough.

So I forgave them to save myself. It was self preservation on my part. I forgave them to save myself from becoming like them. I forgave them because I had no other way to let go of the pain, nothing else had worked and in the end I truly forgave them because I know they really did not mean to hurt me.......they were just a screwed up person and I did not want to become as screwed up as they were.

It was liberating. Emotional baggage sux. It gets really heavy and no one carries it for you.

The best thing I ever did was forgive, it really set me free and healed me.

reply to post by Mijamija


Yes, thank you for your story Mijamija. What you wrote reminds me of simularities I experianced and do I see you understand.

Maybe that is the true and most important meaning of forgiving someone. It is not in the first place to acquit the trespasser from his punishment and to give him the opportunity to appreciate a second chance but is the primairy goal of forgiving avoiding long-term embitterment on-top of you being the victim in the first place.

I consider this less pleasant experiance an important lesson in life. Maybe I am stretching it a bit when I say If parents would explain the importance of this other side of forgiving to their children there will be maybe less violent and unhappy people around. Some of the young teenagers are really heartless towards eachother which can result in unhappy and frustarated teenagers.

Often people are depressive and full with anger because they carry an un-processed emotional grudge and not aware that forgiving is not only about giving the other person an other chance but will also contribute to the emotional healing of the victim.

Yes, I was a very unhappy teenager, so often when I look at kids these days I remember myself and all the difficulties I had.

Forgiveness is surrender to what was. It involves acceptance that some bad thing occurred and you were hurt and there is nothing you can do to change it, it already happened. Nothing will fix it. And you should not blame yourself.

Once you accept that this bad thing happened to you, you were hurt by it and it cannot be changed you move past it, and let it go,

I spent much energy screaming for mountains to move and raging against the machine and raging against myself but eventually the hate was so thick, I was suffocated by it and no longer even knew who I really was.

It has taken me years to get back on my path.....I detour sometimes, but i not as lost as I was when I was younger.

Kids need to be taught forgiveness at an early age, so when those bad things do happen they do not lash out and hurt others or themselves.

I too wonder how the world would be if there was more forgiveness and less vengeance. I had my fill of vengeance, it tasted like poision in my throat.