Two underrated virtues

Recently I came across two friends who have not talked to each other for six years. In another curious case, a brother and sister last talked 20 years back and still continue to avoid each other. Many of my readers would have encountered such stories. This triggers one question. What  might be the toughest thing for human beings? I feel it is the inability  to forget , forgive and move on.  Accordingly, I feel  that forgetting and  forgiving are two of  our highly underrated virtues. A lot of fantastic human beings find it so difficult to forgive. For them certain things  are not negotiable and certain issues can never be settled. For them certain relationships are broken permanently.  If the inability to forgive has a good company it is the inability to forget.  We have stocked far too many things in our memory.  And a lot of such stuff do not add any value to our personal lives but facilitate only an inner turmoil.   The inability to forget our losses , errors, embarrassments etc is a real one . In short , so many people are condemned to live with bad memories and the tragedy is that we rarely understand the huge impact of both in our personal lives.

Forgiving  is strength  , not  weakness 

Forgiveness is a popular virtue in religions.  Religions which were used to trade in vengeance   understood that it’s better to sell forgiveness for the modern man . The God of vengeance is out of fashion. The image of a Christ forgiving those who crucified him has the power to calm down the most hardened human being.  When people who have nothing to do with God or religion also swear  by the therapeutic value of  forgiveness ,   we realise that forgiving  can be  cool and trendy. Look at what Nobel winning writer Elias Canetti wrote in his classic Crowds and Power ,

“power of pardoning someone is one which every individual reserves for himself and one which we all possess”

Do some people have a notion that forgiveness is for those who are weak?  Is it applicable for only those who cannot retaliate?   There is a sizeable number of people who are defined by their vengeance towards the other. Nietzsche termed forgiveness as “not being able to take vengeance ’. Here the question each person who is offended or hurt needs to ask is, whether forgiveness has a chance?  Should a friendship or bond be sacrificed for an isolated incident?  Whether an act of forgiveness can heal the wound and bring peace?  Sometimes we are under the illusion that an act of vengeance will bring lasting peace while the reality may be different.

We need to look at the whole idea of forgiveness afresh. Then we may realise, how naturally forgiveness becomes the mark of a strong human being who is ready to move on without harping on vengeance. He/she gains by forgiving what they would have lost by retaliation. Mahatma Gandhi said,

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attitude of the strong” 

Forgiving takes you closer to your relationships.  There is freedom for an error and few other things give people more confidence in life.  Children lie less when they have forgiving parents . A lot of marriages bounce back  to life  when each partner knows how to forgive one another. When forgiveness is in action, few friendships pass through a silent mode.    

The importance of tidying up

 Imagine a room stacked with everything.  You are most likely to tidy up the room before putting new things.  Now think of your memory like a room.   The question is, do you need to remember every bad experience, every agony and every setback indefinitely?  In a lot of cases, people have this peculiar problem of harbouring all bitter thoughts within themselves.   They find it unable to forget and move on. In a number of instances, this prevents people from embracing the new and exciting which is reaching us. We prefer to move on with our baggage of memories.  Memory plays a far bigger role than we all imagine. It intervenes in our lives in myriad ways shaping our decisions and attitudes.   The point is not  to forget all but whether you should be  living as a prisoner to bad memories  and should they be allowed to alter your future choices. Each one of us is engaged in our own daily struggles and  what we need the least is a heavy baggage of bad memories.   

Learning to forget

There are instances when bitter memories define the character of a nation.  In this category, perhaps nothing comes close to the haunting images of the Holocaust. Few events of 20^th century left such a scar on the collective conscience of the world like the Holocaust. Every Jew born after the Holocaust carries its memories and images. It has defined their attitudes towards other people, their very nationhood and status.  It’s something they feel they can never forget.  As I was thinking about forgetting the bitter memories, it was illuminating to come across a strange call from a Holocaust survivor to his fellow countrymen. In this unusual and passionate plea from Yehuda Elkana , a prominent  Israeli educationist, philosopher and Holocaust survivor  exhorted  his countrymen to  “ learn to forget.” According to him, the deepest political and social factor which motivates much of Israeli society in its relations with Palestinians is not personal frustration but a profound existential “ angst” fed by a particular interpretation of Holocaust and the readiness to believe  that the whole world is against  us  and that we are  the eternal victim”.  He  says emphatically that 

“ without ignoring the historic importance of collective memory , a climate in which an entire people determine its attitude to the present  and shapes its future by emphasizing the lessons of the past is fraught with peril ….

In  other  words, it will not be wholly appropriate to involve the dead in the political  life of the living. This is a tough message . But as Yehuda reminds, we must never underestimate the power of images of horror in inciting an  entire people to ways of hate .  In such instances  there is a need to desist from making events  such as holocaust the central axis of national experience and this in no way is a call to stop teaching history. What is perhaps needed for the future of our generation is that we must also learn to forget.

The takeaway

As long as humanity prefer peace to everything else, forgiveness will and should remain relevant and worth trying.  In making personal, family and social relationships work,  forgiveness play a stellar role and we forget it at our own peril. It is up to us to banish the bitterness from our minds to embrace the ever new before us. None of us is here for an eternity and an investment in vendetta can be the worst choice in such a scenario. Vengeance or retaliation are tempting options but when we pause and explore further, forgiveness will turn out to be a better choice. Our futures are better built on such reconciliation and small acts of forgiveness.