forgiveness

Huong Pham
Ms. Lavarini
English 099
23 October 2014

True Forgiveness
Since human beings communicated with others by language, they have known the existence of the word “forgiveness”; but the truth is that not many people know the accurate meaning of this abstract term until they have deeply experienced and thoroughly thought about it. Or some people spend their entire lives to understand and experience the lesson of true forgiveness. In the early thought, most people think forgiveness is the action of accepting others’ apologies when other have wrong them; however, true forgiveness is much more than that simple action. In other words, the attitudes and the feelings towards forgiveness are the major points that one should consider the most. So what is true forgiveness?
Firstly, to understand about true forgiveness, ones need to find out the causes that make people to perform this action, and humans’ flaws are the ultimate reasons of forgiving. Because nobody is perfect, people make mistakes in their every awaken minutes, even the kindest ones. Those faults can be neither accidents nor sometimes the thoughtless or deliberate actions of people; they literally have strong effects on others. If a person who does wrong is good- hearted and thoughtful enough, he or she will immediately feel regret and certainly want others to sympathize and forgive for his or her mistakes. That is how forgiveness is firstly formed. Then observing more deeply, ones can tell forgiveness is not easily to be done as it seems. In some mistakes people can quickly forgive, yet some will stay forever in their minds if they feel extremely hurt and angry about them. A customer, for example, could supposedly forgive a waiter who accidentally spilled the tea in his pants, or a manager could calmly ignore when his officer was late for the meeting once. Those are understandable situations ones can forgive others with ease. Whereas, a teenage girl could not forgive for her closest friend when that friend has told everybody at school about her secrets, or a sale man could not keep quiet when his honest colleague has stolen his creative ideas for new project. They are unpredictable situations in which the ones people totally trust or love turn out to be ones’ betrayers or haters. Such severe troubles lead them to different ways in responding, except for forgiveness. No matter what happened, they were treated badly: their hearts were broken, and their trust was destroyed. Since the thoughts of grudge and revenge were invading their minds, they thought they would never forgive those bad people. By now the meaning of forgiveness appears more apparently as the best solution for ones to overcome the tough feelings of grudge and disappointment. In other words, they want to ease the feeling of resentment against their offenders, so they accept the truth and let it go. They want to give up the old gloomy past; otherwise, their lives will gradually be ruined by hatred and pain.
Is forgiveness the best solution for ones who are in misery and anger? Yes, it is the one that helps people to get out the trap of more misery, pain, frustration and self-hatred. However, it depends on people’s attitude towards their problems. For instance, if they love and have responsibility to themselves, they can still wisely choose how to respond in those tough moments. By giving up the grudge, they kill the desire for revenge so that they free themselves from misery. They choose forgiveness because it will positively bring back their happiness and peace of mind sooner or later. When ones accept and show their sympathy to others’ mistakes, it means they forgive not only for the sake of others but also for their soul. On the contrary, because of the extremes of sorrow and disappointment, they blindly react the situations with their negative feelings of anger, hatred without noticing the results. They think revenge is the best solution for their problems, which is definitely not a wise decision. A friend of mine, whose boyfriend lied to her after four- year affection and fell in love with another young girl in his company. His betrayal liked a knife stabbed in her heart; she was more vulnerable than ever. She was shock because she never thought her boyfriend could treat her badly like that. Even though time flew by, she still kept holding her grudge and never let it go. Instead of forgetting the sadness event and giving herself more time to recover, she started her bad habits of drinking and smoking more often. Neglecting much good advice from her beloved family and friends, she still let herself slide down the slope of hopeless uncontrollably. It could have been better if she had love herself more and tried to forgive once. Unfortunately, it is a sad ending for ones who cannot forgive for others’ faults only one time.
After all, in spite of how tough of the feeling towards the mistakes that ones have, freeing the past, letting the resentment go, and allowing new future in are key elements for ones to forgive in a positive and efficient way. Especially, people will see that their lives are much easier and happier when they forgive for others. Though it seems to hurt themselves more at first, it carries a long lasting consequence of more optimist and serenity to people.