We humans are of different nature, unique in ways that suits us best. We are creation that compounds of all kind of complexities, a beautiful living mess I would say. Our actions are dictated by our perspectives, which means for every action taken by a human, it has spent considerable amount of time being just a thought before it manifest into an action. Then this actions are taken for different purposes, either to fulfill a desire or objective but regardless of our intention, every action taken is capable of hurting another and we do it on and on creating trails of painful and hurtful memories.
The recipient of this hurtful act are left with choices to make, either for them or the person that hurts them, a choice to forgive or forget or to do both. Is forgive and forget a package deal? Well, a human mind does works in miraculous ways. Like I said earlier, every human differs based on knowledge and our manner of thinking. What works for one person might not necessarily work for another.
I once heard, "when you forgive someone, it is not necessarily mean you are bound to forget, you forgive for you not for them. The structure of the mind exist in such a way that it fixates on our most painful and loving memories, if we allow it. For the loving memories, what a beautiful thing it is, to have something beautiful to think of and fixate on, it makes the mind filled it colourful butterflies, painful memories effect works the same way but in reverse.
The same way the mind dwell on loving memories and makes creative imagination of it, it does the same for painful memories, the question is, if loving memories were to paint beautiful images, what kind of pictures would a painful memory paint? This is what founded the basis of forgiving people for you not for them, to prevent the human mind for reliving the horrors a human being once experience, failure to do so that might lead to trauma.
Which means a human can choose to do one while living out the other, I mean forgiving without forgetting. Then people wonder, can one be done without the other? it is indeed a tricky thing. How would we presume to forgive without forgetting? I know it sounds strange but the human mind is capable of such miracle, if you would allow it ofcourse. Forgiving someone means letting go of the pain and the need to act on the pain, it doesn't necessarily mean eradicating the memory like most people would assume.
Considering the uniqueness of each individual's nature, the mind is indeed capable of doing it but not everyone is capable of it. Some people prefer to forgive and forget as a package deal before they can move on but not everyone is wired like this or should I say no one is wired like this. The fact is no one can truly forget a painful memory, memories are like webs and the moment a person experience something that triggers a painful memory from the past, every detail comes crawling back like zombies.
The only case I have seen that people can totally forget a memory is when they suffer from memory loss or should I say dementia, even then, the mind might forget but the body still remembers what a person once felt or endured, human psychology is messed up. Which means for a person that claims to forget is like a game of pretense but forgiveness, well that seems like the actual deal to an extent.
If you refuse to forget, can you claim to have moved on? This is where I use myself as a case study. If you were indeed reading through thoroughly without missing any comma or full-stop, you would remember where I said, "you can forgive a person for your benefit to prevent your mind from fixating. I was definitely referring to myself because my mind is far more super active than anything I have seen, I'm in capable of forgetting anything. For a person like me you would assume I'm incapable of forgiveness, which is not true.
Knowing my nature, anytime I'm hurt by someone I don't blame them for it, I blame myself for granting them the privilege to hurt me. The fact is, when people hurt us, it is us that allowed them to do so. We don't want to accept this because it is easier to blame others for our own shortcomings. This is what I don't do, I don't hold grudges but I keep a record of it, yeah it definitely sounds creepy. You see, I consider myself to be a work in progress and the more I learn about myself the better I become. What teaches the best lesson if not pain?
So when someone hurts me, it makes me learn how capable I'm in handling such matters and also learn about that person's nature to prevent future mistakes. The fact is, for someone to hurt you, you must have done something to trigger their nature. It is like keeping a cat in a store filled with fish, it is almost impossible for the cat not to eat the fishes, so does that make cats bad? We knowing this about cats based on our experience with them, makes us not put them in a situation where they would reveal the unpleasant part of them.
Which means I forgive people genuinely, it might be hard sometimes but I do, despite this I still keep a detailed record of their wrongdoings in order to prevent such things from repeating itself and to set proper boundaries.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Forgive and forget in hive learners community.
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