Forgive and Forget

We have heard this phrase ‘n’ number of times in our lives. But what exactly is meant by this? Let's take a simple example; A insults B for a minor fault in front of 10 people, this hurts B and they stop interacting. B is extremely hurt and gets frustrated with time, as he is unable to forget the incident and it is spoiling his mental and physical state. B desires to come out of it, but is unable to do so.

People say forgive and forget. True! Sounds simple, but isn’t easy. It takes efforts to calm the mind and explain that whatever happened, although was unpleasant, is past and dead. In fact, even a minute passed by is gone and dead, then how could something that is dead and non-existing hurt us? We don’t want to be hurt or rake over those unpleasant memories and spoil our mood. We wish to stay happy all the time but there’s something that keeps disturbing us. The incident is DONE, GONE and DEAD! We know this, then why is it still disturbing us? Well, it is our mind that dwells over the incident which drives us crazy.

Forgive and forget means a “state of mind” when the incident that has happened doesn’t hurt us anymore, even if we happen to remember it sometime. We may say that we have forgiven a person but sometimes we find it difficult to forget the incident. We don’t forget the incident as such, as the mind has the ability of storing it and it merely adds up to our memory. The true meaning of forgiving and forgetting is to get detached with the incident and not get hurt by remembering it.

This state of mind may be achieved only by explaining to ourselves that we don’t have control over certain things in life, for example, acts of God, other’s opinion, other’s actions, and the like. But, we do have control over certain other things in life, our opinion, our state of mind, our actions etc. Therefore, even when someone shouts at us for something not done, improperly done or for whatever reason, shouting and screaming is his action based on his/her own perception, we don’t have control over his temper, but by choosing to stay calm at that moment we choose to stay calm in future too. You may be assertive when you talk but need not be aggressive, is the Mantra!