Have We Forgotten How to Forgive?

Yusra Dahri, Tilford.

I don’t think I know how to forgive.

I used to be proud of my inability to hold a grudge. But then I realised I had nothing to be proud of. I wasn’t forgiving my grudges, not really. I just wouldn’t think about them.

I would forget, not forgive.

It might seem like the same thing, but the key difference is the intention. I wasn’t making a conscious choice. I was just burying the painful memories into my subconscious.

They would conspire there, building a haunted house in my heart. Though I forgot whatever wrong had been done against me, I was constantly agitated. But I didn’t know why. The pain was hidden in the silence between my heartbeats, invisible to my reason.

True forgiveness gives you peace. I forgot, but the ghosts of resentment cooled my heart. I became numb, and I mistook that numbness for peace. Eventually the shadows of those ghosts crept into my compassion. I kept myself aloof from others, watching out for the day I would have to forget what they did, too.

Forgiveness is considered a weakness these days. It’s equal to letting yourself lose. It’s the loss of our dignity, the loss of our self-respect, the loss of our morals.

When your morals are close to you, it’s harder to forgive, ironically because you can’t accept a violation of those morals.

But I don’t think that’s something I should accept within myself. Surely forgiveness is a moral too?

Forgiveness is sacrificing our pain to give someone else another chance.

The idea that pain can be sacrificed may seem absurd, but truthfully, we can enjoy our own misery.

We can wallow in our suffering, make ourselves into martyrs so people have to apologise to us for the rest of our lives. We don’t want to let that type of superiority go, no matter how suicidal it is for our souls.

In a sense, forgiveness is that moral virtue that’s the most unexpected. When we think of morality, we might think of strict, high standards. It’s survival of the purest.

Yet forgiveness bypasses this idea. It takes the judgement that we are prone to and condemns it.

Human judgement is not a virtue, but forgiveness is. Islam teaches that, “…whoso forgives and his act brings about reformation, his reward is with Allah…” (Holy Qur’an, 42:41)

Why is Allah’s nature as the Most Merciful so emphasised in the Holy Qur’an? Though God’s forgiveness is not something that can be competed with, how can forgiveness then be a sign of weakness?

If we don’t want to give other people the chance to become better people through our forgiveness, then we should ask ourselves why. Are we just being petty? Perhaps, the truth is that we ourselves need to become better people.

I don’t think forgiveness is easy. In some cases, it’s unthinkable. In these cases, we know we’re not being petty. Sometimes cruelty goes beyond our capacity for forgiveness.

That said, I’d like to propose that forgiveness is the ultimate strength. Let’s do away with the notion that forgiveness is a passive activity. Often, it can be brutal to ourselves. Sometimes forgiveness isn’t for the sake of the other person. Sometimes it’s for ourselves.

Forgiveness hurts the ego, but it wouldn’t hurt any of us to be more humble. The more forgiving we are to others, the more forgiving we can be to ourselves. We can allow ourselves to be forgiven, too.

I don’t think I know how to forgive. But I am learning.