What else is left to do? Forgive.

Growing up in an environment where clear apology is not normally heard, I made myself a not-so forgiving person–which I would always use as alibi when in a conflict and I don’t feel like reconciling with the other party. Partly that’s true, somehow it’s the only truth I ought to take hold as I try to process things.

To forgive is easy. To not forgive – for me – is much easier.

When I stand by this, people always use the Christian-card. God can forgive, why can’t you? and other spiritual-related arguments on forgiveness. I never cared. I would say Well I am not God to forgive. What a rebuttal, I’d think.

Then I get to thinking: I have always thought of forgiveness differently. In no way forgiveness is condoning one’s wrong acts. It isn’t also tantamount to reconciling a ruined relationship (Sutton, 2010 [as cited in Sutton, 2024]). My fear is that if I forgive someone, this should follow going back to the normal and past ways my relationship is. Realizing now that it is otherwise, I have been pondering on the thought of finally forgiving. This is so Christian of me, I guess.

As I try to process my unforgiveness, which Sutton (2024) defines as something that “incorporates a complex of negative emotions, negative thoughts, negative motivations, and avoidance behavior focused on the offender and the transgression,” I noticed also that when I do not forgive, I tend to be more irate, and I do not do well with people. At the core of it, I would say I do not care about unforgiveness, but in reality, I just shove it aside – until it’s no longer on the table. (Funny how now that I am writing about it, I could barely breathe.)

Is it really worth it to forgive? Or would it be a lot better to “let it go” and not deal with remedying unforgiveness? It is a freeing act to forgive. When people forgive, they are simply emancipating themselves from the prison and chain of the past – that sooner or later will haunt them.

I suppose it is time to forgive.

I grew up with parental rage. I have long questioned the fact that I was not raised by my own parents, even when they could have chosen to. Eventually, I slowly unraveled that anger, and exploded (even imploded) in some wrong ways. Was it resolved? I was not certain. Did I forgive? Definitely.

There is an inexplainable feeling of emancipation when we forgive.

I suppose it is time to forgive.

I have cut people from my life – refusing to give them access on the personal side of who I am. Some of them I thought would be my forever friends, but I ended up letting go of. At the onset, I was carrying grudge – the dark reality of hating them for hurting / betraying me. But they’re also just humans. Like me, they make mistakes, they can hurt people even when they don’t want to. Who am I not to recognize the undeniably humane aspect of every person I met? If I expect (or at least, hope) that people will forgive me when I err, why won’t I do the same?

I am old enough to see that people are just as scarred, sinful, imperfect, and err-doing like me. It is time to realize that we are only covered by the same firmament, stepping on the same earth, breathing in the same air–who am I to be the highly-regarded one who seem to not give people enough space to commit mistakes and make wrong decisions?

It is time to forgive, I know. #