How to Forgive Without Forgetting
Those who tell you that you should "forgive and forget" may be sincere, but sincerely mistaken.
- Difficulty:
- Moderately Challenging
Instructions
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Forgiveness is Not the Same as Amnesia
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1
Don't get caught up in an "everybody's right but me" mentality. Having a judgmental spirit is not always a bad thing. In the book "Blink," Malcolm Gladwell says we can know what someone or something is all about within the first 60 seconds of giving it or them the energy of listening without interruption.
Gladwell didn't invent this concept. When I was a child, my grandmother said, "You know how you can tell someone's lying?"..."Their mouth is open." It doesn't get that extreme for me, but I understood the gist of what she was trying to say.
If you get a bad feeling about someone or something from inception, trust your instinct--it's usually reading something that you don't see at the moment. -
2
Try not to get in a position to have to forgive. Sometimes that means not giving anyone the energy it takes to entertain foolishness from the start. Having said that, most folks (nearly everybody) are going to give nearly all the people they encounter in life more than a minute to speak their peace; some will go so far as to allow that first encounter to become a somewhat "permanent" fixture in their lives.
If [when] that happens, the following will help with those moments when someone steps on your toes or gets on your nerves, or worse, intrudes in your life without your acknowledgment or permission in such a way that it makes you want to hurt them. Real bad.
The following step is what to do when revenge is not the answer and only self-love can conquer hate. -
3
Understand that your mind will never allow you to truly "forget" a transgression or grievance against another person. If we've all heard it 10,000 times already, here it is for the 10,001st: Forgiveness is giving yourself permission to get on with your life in spite of the slight or the overwhelming and unthinkable transgression into your domain.
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4
You can always kill in effigy. Take a photo or something that belongs to them that you just happen to be in possession of at the moment and throw darts at it or take a match to it, or just break it into little pieces; or take a half dozen raw eggs and throw them at a tree in your yard and imagine it's their head and brains splattering when the egg goo cracks and spills out. In your mind, you got them back and didn't have to answer to a judge in a court of law for it or risk exchanging your life for theirs. [And take a water hose or pitcher of water along. You'll have to clean up the mess and give the yolks and whites back to the earth from whence they cometh.]
You could kill them literally, then forgive them. But a word to the wise: The ultimate consequences are not worth it. -
5
Know that if you forget, you may be doomed to repeat it.
You don't need to dwell on it, let it make you miserable or give up your short time in life thinking of ways to get revenge. Just put a big red check mark next to their name in your mind or address book, and jot down a few words about what they did that made you so angry or hurt you so badly; then put it away. You will need it for future reference. Human nature often beckons us to draw that person back into our realm, to reopen a door to that place where they are subject to do what they did wrong all over again.
The saying goes: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." -
6
Don't let a Bible thumper throw you off your guard in the key element of understanding forgiveness without forgetting: It is a release, not grounds for naïveté.
Jesus Christ, in telling us to forgive our neighbor "seventy times seven" times, never once said anything about forgetting it; or about counting each time we forgive until it adds up to 490 or a conglomerate 490 times over a life span before you do bodily injury. If you allow someone to harm you, physically or emotionally, 490 times, see the last sentence of Step 5 above. If you believe in God, understand that He created and developed the human mind; He knows that it was designed to "call all things to remembrance" at a needful time. Don't allow yourself to continually be deceived by those who didn't learn their lesson when you didn't kill them the first time.
Forgive, yes. Forget? Never.
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Tips & Warnings
This article was not meant to give anyone an excuse to be mean-spirited, but as an admonishment to push past the pain and move on with your own life.
