Sunday, June 15, 2014

Forgiveness is a choice

I had used a phrase, “To err is human” in my previous post. The complete phrase is “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Recently I read a book, “Forgiveness Is aChoice by Robert D. Enright, a self-help book filled with wisdom and warm encouragement, demonstrating how taking the path of forgiveness can benefit a person in his/her life.
The concept of forgiveness and building of trust amongst individuals is likely to renovate many a relationships and families. As a result of reading this book I have committed myself to greater amount of self-acceptance and emotional maturity, due to which I have sort of enabled myself to forgive people who had hurt me.
Forgiveness helps in reducing a person’s anxiety and depression, at the same time increasing self-esteem and hopefulness toward one's future. Each human being has been endowed with the innate ability to forgive. One just needs to explore this by themselves. Many people who are angry at a loved one who hurt them feel guilty for their unconscious violent impulses. When persons forgive, their fear and guilt is automatically reduced. Forgiving does not require denying the fact that we have been hurt. In order to forgive, one has to admit that he/she was hurt and has a right to feel hurt, angry or resentful. 

2 comments:

  1. I agree with this view of forgiveness, but i have my own viewpoint.
    If forgiveness is practiced as an endless phenomenon it gives birth to chaos social condition. If we recall hindu mythological text in which there is a story of lord krishna & shishupal where krishna forgave shishupal for his 100 mistakes but for the 101 he punished him. So after a certain limit punish a person instead of forgiving. Analytical intervention, magnitude of mistake, amount, etc are important to consider before we forgive. Otherwise we have only sick environment/society/surroundings.

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  2. Nitish, I completely agree with you. Please read the lines written in red in my post, "Forgiving does not require denying the fact that we have been hurt. In order to forgive, one has to admit that he/she was hurt and has a right to feel hurt, angry or resentful."

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