forgive… and forget (or not?)

anwar said he will forgive but he will not forget (no, this post is not about anwar, like my post below). can one forigive but yet not forget? to me, it depends on the situation or circumstances but more likely, the answer is no.

well, to me if one can’t forget whatever had happened to him, deep down in his heart, he will still harbour some grudges, hence no forgiveness.

the very tone of “i will forgive you but i will never forget what you did” suggest to me that it is wrong. ‘forgive you’. ‘never forget’. if someone hurts me very badly and i want to forgive him, then i will try to forget the hurts done by him to me too. if i can’t forget, i will not be a hypocrite to say i had forgiven him. he hurt me badly, i will remember it for life. i can say i forgive him but yet if i remember what he did to me, deep inside me there will be this resentment in me that he had hurt me before, so where does the forgiveness comes in?

of course i don’t mean to say that the person who got hurt, after forgiving, should forget whatever happened to him at once. no way of course. it takes time to forget. then the person should say “i will forgive you and i will try to forget what happened” (and sincerely made an effort to forget) instead of saying “i forgive you but i will not forget what you did”. after all the popular saying you heard is ‘forgive and forget’, not something like ‘forgive but but cannot forget’. right.

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