Forgive but don’t forget. It is definitely easier said than done. A human’s natural instinct is to look after himself first. In that same process, more often than we would like, we hurt other people. Most of the time we don’t do it on purpose.
Our decisions shouldn’t depend on other people’s feelings. In a specific situation with 3 people, one will get hurt depending on our choice. This is one of those moments where the best choice would be to choose ourselves. People end up hurt, unintentionally. It is out of our hands. We can’t control how our decisions will influence others. But, if the other person that ends up hurt is someone we care about, will we really feel that we made the right decision?
At the beginning, of course not.
A normal person, wouldn’t feel right if their decision hurt someone else. We would need some time to cope with the consequences of our actions.
The hardest part is to know when our personal life decisions will lead us to hurt someone – including ourselves. For example, you might have difficult choices that go beyond your own needs, like choosing between a new job opportunity or a certain person. In situations like these, we need to analyze the consequences of both choices and learn from there.
Every action has consequences. Most actions cause at least some sort of harm, other actions contribute to good in some small way as well.
The world is a complicated place, even more complicated for people who are honest, hard-working and thoughtful about their effect on others. Given the number of people on earth and the complexity of the global system, there are many points at which our lives intersect with others, and a great many decisions that impact someone else. A single choice made by you doesn’t have to cause much harm on its own, but over time can build into a significant set of problems for other people. Can we really just ignore these effects?
We cannot live a life without making choices that affect other people, sometimes in ways we didn’t intend at all.
By choosing what you want instead of finding common ground, you ignore the feelings of others. By choosing to be happy instead of making others happy, you choose to hurt them. While you cannot consider the interests of everyone all at once, there are ways to avoid making decisions that harm people and ways to take steps towards finding common ground.
It is sad that this idea is not more common. We can all do some things to prevent hurting others.
We are in nature, selfish. We monopolize the things in our own lives that matter most and neglect the things that don’t. In some cases this is unforgivable and sometimes it isn’t. The consequences for everything we do reverberate in part or in total to other people, especially romantic partners and children.
Most of you reading this might have found yourself in a situation like this, where you unintentionally hurt someone, but most of you also have been hurt.
Because nobody is perfect. The friends and family we have known for years, even strangers, have a habit of saying or doing the wrong thing if we let them, sometimes out of carelessness, sometimes out of genuine confusion, and occasionally out of jealousy. But if you recognize that everyone makes mistakes, and forgive the ones who matter to you, it can go a long way towards strengthening your relationships going forward.
The result is that we forgive them and forget about the transgression, but what do we do to people, who have hurt us or inexcusable actions? It may seem nice to forgive someone and ignore their actions, but how does it affect both our happiness and that of others involved in this interaction? In the end after we have forgiven someone, are we hurt more than if we had just not forgiven the person who hurt us?
If you’re finding it hard to find forgiveness, then perhaps it’s time to take a step back and admit that you need to let go of the situation. If you can’t forgive someone, then they’ll likely always be a part of your life. They’ll be able to hurt you, and it will cause all kinds of stress. Perhaps it’s not that person’s fault that they hurt you or did something wrong, but as long as you hold onto the grudge, they’ll always have power over you. You may feel like by doing so, it helps your case; but in reality, it’s only hurting yourself in the long run. The best way to move on is to let go of your feelings and try to get over it.
Don’t forget about it, but forgive in order to benefit from it.
