It’s often said that it’s better to forgive but in the face of the facts and reality about betrayal and pain, many people find it hard to follow this advice. There are all sorts of reasons why some people have decided never to forgive their friends, relatives, spouses, parents, children, etc and this can be seen in a lot of estranged and broken relationships.
The truth, however, is that forgiveness is still the best state of heart and state of relations with others that everyone should seek after and for those who still disagree, here are five you should consider forgiveness:
Nobody is perfect
No one around us is perfect but more importantly,we ourselves are not perfect. We may be able to give harsh judgement on others for their mistakes and wrongdoings but before we make decisions to hold on to our grudges, we must consider the fact that we also are not perfect and may make the same errors that we have judged others for.
The question is this; would we want others to withhold forgiveness from us if we made the same mistakes?
Revenge is not certain
If your hope or reason for withholding forgiveness is that you hope or have a plan to exert revenge, think again. You may never get the chance to revenge or your plans may even fail, then you’ll be even more miserable because you’re carrying the pain of the offence and the pain of being unable to revenge.
Revenge is too costly
All that time planning and scheming just to pay someone back in their own coin isn’t really worth it. You could be doing something better like meeting people who will erase your bad experiences with the good they’ll bring. Let it go.
You don’t know the whole story
You may think that what that person has done is inexcusable but the truth is that you probably don’t know the whole story. Sometimes people hurt us and do terrible things for reasons that we are not privy to. We may sanctimoniously conclude that nothing could justify their actions but the truth is that you might hear their reasons and be humbled. Why not just forgive?
They may not know or care
One of the worst things that can happen is to carry the weight of a grudge against someone who doesn’t know that they have wrong us. Another terrible one is to maintain a determined anger against someone who just doesn’t care how we feel and is having all the fun while sulk and have all sorts of harmful thoughts.
Forgiveness may be the best idea after all.