Forgiveness – meaning

Description on Wikipedia – ”Forgiveness, in a psychological sense, is the intentional and voluntary process by which one who has felt wronged, harmed, or hurt changes their feelings and attitude towards the offender, and overcomes the impact of the offense, including negative emotions such as resentment or desire for vengeance. Theorists differ in the extent to which they believe forgiveness also implies replacing the negative emotions with positive attitudes (e.g., an increased ability to tolerate the offender) or requires reconciliation with the offender”.

What forgiveness means to me?

To me personally, forgiveness means, that I will reconcile with people who hurt me or that their behaviour is okay. I can forgive to people when their behaviour wasn’t damaging or if I feel I can go back to them and continue communicating. I forgive to those who are worth it. Meaning, that if someone did a mistake, or actually redeems themselves by trying to improve themselves so their behaviour doesn’t repeat – good. I can forgive.

Should we forgive people who hurt us?

I’ve been reading quite a lot of things where it states how important is to forgive to people who hurt us. First person who said that they won’t forgive people who abused her was Dr Ramani. I saw comments that people think she still holds anger and etc. A lot of negativities regarding of this statement.

Now, I do agree with her. I won’t ever forgive people who abused me.

Before I explain why, I will ask a simple question – do you forgive Hitler, Stalin, murderers, rapists and all people who did very bad things?

If no – why? If yes – why?

As I’ve mentioned, to me forgiveness means that I say that people’s behaviour was okay and that they can come back to my life and communicate with me. People who abused me don’t deserve to be back in my life and their behaviour wasn’t acceptable. So, no. I won’t forgive.

However, I do have compassion to them. I don’t have resentment or anger. I understand why they are the way they are and I know that they were hurt too. I can accept that and not to have any bad feelings towards them. I can hate them. Same as I hate ginger or mustard. But I don’t wish them anything bad. I am letting them go. Just because they’ve experienced something bad, that doesn’t excuse them. They are adults who could have dealt with it the same way I’m dealing with it right now. No excuses. If you cannot deal with your problems as an adult – don’t have children and continue abusive cycle.

In my opinion, I can have compassion as now I know, people who abuse – they abuse themselves. They hate themselves and that’s why they abuse. If they would love themselves and be capable of love, they wouldn’t abuse. I feel sorry for them, because they hate themselves so much that it goes onto others. It passes to other people.

You know, one of the things I’ve learned from my abusive ex-partner – his hate towards me, showed me how much I hated myself. Now, I love so much myself that I won’t allow anyone to put any hate onto me. They can take their hate and drink the pills.

I don’t know how much you know about serial killers, but they were all abused. Instead of feeling their emotions, shame and anger, they transfer it to people they kill. They kill their abuser but in other people. Because that’s all they see.

Since I’ve been doing work on myself, I’ve realised how many problems in humanity would be gone, if we would just sit with ourselves and acknowledge what we feel. Men are not allowed to feel, cry or anything to do with emotions. Consequence of that – he dehumanized them and now they are the ones who commit most of the crimes. We made them emotionless.

When we forget and forgive then it’s when history repeats itself. Some things shouldn’t be forgotten and forgiven.

Should we forgive people who hurt us? I guess it all depends on our understanding of forgiveness.