TO FORGIVE IS NOT TO FORGET

Through out my life I have learned to forgive many things. To learn to forgive is a personal challenge. It is hard in the beginning, for you don’t know how to deal with your emotions and also one does not know how to control painful memories. When people use the term “to forget” referring to forgiveness in reality it seems to what they are referring to is to “erase” memories, and this is not possible. This way of thinking does not lead us to forgive, but to evade and avoid what has happened which does not solve anything. Forgiveness has a process. The first step in this process is the “Emotional Burst”. Attempt to liberate all the emotional energy. Go out and run, put a pillow on your face and yell as loud as you can, hit your bed until you get as tired as to go from rage and tension to tiredness and relaxation, in this way you will be able to think with more clarity and make better decisions. It is also important to allow yourself to experience what you are feeling, specially if it happened recently, don’t repress it. Then comes “comprehension” which consists in trying to know and understand bit by bit the experienced situation, the reasons “which might have logic or not” and the story of the person who might have with or without intension hurt you. For example, today I met a great person, who told me that when he was a child his father got home drunked many times and beat his mother and brothers brutally. But then he told me that he had learned to forgive his father mainly in wanting and trying to comprehend why his father behaved like this. He discovered that his fathers life had been incredibly hard. He did not justify his father, but it did help him to forgive and comprehend. Then comes the step of “accepting what happened”, which as I have said can many times lack of logic, but it is good to understand that not all actions that people make are logic. For example, once I knew a person that people generally considered good, that never intended to hurt anybody. This person had a long time relation, one day he discovered that his girlfriend had been unfaithful in many opportunities, even dough the relation seemed to be going very well. So in order to forgive he decided to put into practice the three steps which I have mentioned. First he allowed himself to experience the whole love-hate that he felt towards her and enter a gym where he liberated all the emotional energy. Then he comprehended her story and this helped him to understand what had happened. And last he accepted that things had already occurred in that way, and that they corresponded to his past, and that he could choose between living his present and his future bitter for what had happened or to forgive and live happily without resentments. This person chose the second option. The last step consists on “letting go”, one can go through many days or months in the process of forgiveness but if you choose to stay in resentment you can spend years or your whole life stuck on it. If you choose to forgive, learn to let go, don’t get stuck on the subject, carry on with your life, recreate, reinvent and improve yourself. The process of forgiveness can take time and one can get used to living with that emotion and not let it go. To let go, is a decision that requires determination and persevearence.

And last, it is important to know that maybe the most difficult thing in this process is to understand that memories activate emotions, but it is just that, an emotion and for its own nature it will disappear on time. For the brain to remember is “to live again” for the same neuronets that where active in the time of that specific experience activate. If you make an effort to follow these steps bit by bit the emotion will cease to relate with those memories that disturb you so much. Forgiveness is one of the best guaranties for happiness.