Once in a while we all find ourselves saying, “I will never be able to forgive X, for what he or she did.” One is probably justified in thinking so. Perhaps one was wronged in a way that one shouldn’t have been. Perhaps one was backstabbed and betrayed or was a victim of petty politicking or a nasty conspiracy.

Occasionally we also rewind to a time when something happened and reflect, “I can never forgive myself for that.” While it is okay to feel that ‘I can never forgive’ feeling once in a while — after all we are only human — forgiveness is very empowering and literally the path to freedom. Here is how.
By internalising the ‘I can never forgive’ message, one is not only keeping the memory of that hurt alive, one is also imbuing that thought with more power. Dwelling on, revisiting and agonising over the past hurts in today’s age of psychological warfare only means that the offender has managed to get the upper hand. By not forgiving we are not letting go. We are simply hanging on to something long gone and we are allowing that memory or pain or whatever to consume us.
We all know of instances where bad blood between families is consciously nurtured and the hatchet is never buried, even when subsequent generations don’t understand what the fuss was all about. The damage caused to oneself in the process is great and can well be avoided.
As Catherine Ponder, inspirational author and Minister of the Unity Church said, “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
Agreed that it is hard to forgive when one is deeply hurt but by releasing that emotion one is doing oneself a great favour — for one is literally liberating oneself.
How does one do this practically? It doesn’t mean that what was done was acceptable or fair. It just means that you have grown as a person, that you have moved on, changed course and that the whole episode has paled into insignificance. It’s a bonus if the offender’s plan backfired badly and you were untouched by it or the plan was foiled in time. On occasion, the offender who is usually a habitual offender finally gets a taste of his own medicine and you get to watch (as is bound to happen). Or the whole thing might have turned out to be a blessing in disguise. That in itself is comfort enough. We need not take it upon ourselves to mete out the punishment or wait for it to happen. God takes care of all the wrongdoings and it all evens out in the final analysis.
There is an interesting take on the mechanics of forgiveness and what actually happens to the forgiver in the process. As Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish diplomat and former UN Secretary General who was awarded a Nobel peace prize posthumously, said, “Forgive-ness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you out of love takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness therefore entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way irrespective of the consequences to yourself.”
For those who feel that there are some hurts which are simply unforgivable, here is the touching story of Eva Moses Kor, a forgiveness advocate who suffered pain of the worst kind in a Nazi death camp in Auschwitz. She and her twin sister Miriam along with other twins were guinea pigs in a variety of genetic experiments by a Dr Mengele which ranged from being left naked in a room thrice a week to record their growth, to being injected with liquids through one arm and having blood drawn through the other. With little food and no human kindness Eva fought through it because she didn’t want to die and become the victim of a twin autopsy what with her twin sister’s kidneys becoming damaged.
Finally, years after the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz she embarked on a journey of healing. She reached out to other twins who were the victims of similar experiences, scouted around and found a Nazi doctor who confessed that he himself was battling with his own nightmares and gave him a letter of forgiveness.
She recounts, “It became a gift to me as well because I realised I was not a hopeless, powerless victim.” Although she initially felt she could never ever forgive Dr Mengele, she soon came to realise that she had the power to forgive him as well. She clarified that it did not mean that she would forget the nightmarish experience nor did it change what happened.
On January 27, 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she stood by the ruins of the gas chambers with her children and read out her document of forgiveness and signed it. “As I did that I felt a burden of pain was lifted from me. I was no longer in the grip of pain and hate; I was finally free. I forgave my parents whom I hated all my life for not having saved me (she was cruelly separated from them in the camp) from Auschwitz. And then I forgave myself for hating my parents.
“Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment. I call it a miracle medicine. It is free, it works and has no side-effects. I believe with every fibre of my being that every human being has the right to live without the pain of the past. For most people there is a big obstacle to forgiveness because society expects revenge. It seems we need to honour our victims but I always wonder if my dead loved ones would want me to live with pain and anger until the end of my life. Some survivors do not want to let go of the pain. Forgiveness is as personal as chemotherapy — I do it for myself.”