We’re all familiar with the saying: forgiveness will set you free, yet I wonder if you forgive the one that hurt you, can you also forget?
If we’re able to forgive but unable to forget, is it really authentic?
Can we truly forget the significantly painful events in our lives?
For myself, I have an easier time forgiving the incidents of the distant past, as time seems to gracefully erase the small details that once pushed my big buttons of pain.
What gives me relief is the belief that people are doing the best they can at the time and I remember that I’m here to experience as many lessons as possible in this lifetime. I personally believe that we stand on the other side and decide what we want to experience this lifetime and with who. I trust that I agreed to these situations so I could learn whatever lesson came of them.
This is how I reconcile things in my world and for me, when I remember this; peace arrives.
If I signed up for this, then I can receive the gift of retrospect. What did I learn? What did I gain? What do I carry forward from this experience? This way of reconciling my experiences has helped prevent me from taking the victim stance. Yet even when forgiveness comes, memories linger.
So I wonder; do we ever truly forgive in “real time”? What about our memories of hurt?
I experience myself running the tapes of memories in my head when I feel like I’ve not been fully heard. Sure I can accept an apology and forgive another’s humanness, but the memory of the hurt doesn’t go away until I’ve been fully heard.
We’ve all listened to apologies from those we love, but do we really want or need to hear the “whys” of behaviors? Do we need to hear their remorse along with their promises and words of comfort?
What I believe we really need is to be heard, to be witnessed. To have the one that hurt us listen to what we experienced and how it affected us somehow erases it in the memory of time.
Having the other sit listening without interruption, listening and then mirroring back what they heard me say and how I felt without defense or excuses is the salve that soothes my heart. I feel my heart open and I feel myself come as close to forgiveness as I know to be possible.
I’m not sure I care about forgiveness as much as I care about understanding, insights and growth. My heart yearns to be heard and if the one that I allowed to hurt me has the courage to hear of the damage that was done…then I’m satisfied.
Perhaps it’s that satisfaction of being seen and heard that stops the anger and righteousness; and then when I least expect it, true forgiveness creeps in. I’m heard and no longer need to run the tapes of pain in my head that keep transgressions alive in memory.
Maybe it’s not forgiveness that sets us free, but forgetfulness.
xo
Images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net Woman alone by worradmu. Couple by photostock. Bird by Tina Phillips.
TK,
Thanks for taking something we all experience and perhaps making it easier to resolve. I really like what you have arrived at wtih this.
Scott
Another take on this might be: Forgetting loses the lesson that the need to forgive provides us. In this life, I have found that sometimes we are required to relive certain events that have brought us pain in order to continue learning how to avoid future painful experiences. Through repetition, we find that we only thought we’d learned the lesson but may have moved on too quickly. In this way, we imperfect beings find a sort of grace in finally letting go.
Oh, I agree. Never lose the lesson. Just forget the “story” after it’s over and we’ve been able to be heard. It’s the “story” that we run through our heads that we need to forget to move on….but never lose the lesson!
xo