There Is An Important Difference Between Forgiving And Forgetting

There is a difference between forgiving and forgetting that many people seem to miss. Even if you are forgiving someone, it doesn't mean that you need to forget what they did. It doesn't mean that you keep on repeating your mistakes of the past, by forgetting everything that happened in the past.

Photo by Atsadawut Chaiseeha on Unsplash.

Transcript

Hi everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I'm so grateful that you're listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I really appreciate the support.

In this video I wanted to actually speak to you about forgiving versus forgetting.

I kind of have this weird misconception or this belief that there is this myth going around the world with the whole you know turn the other cheek that Jesus Christ tells us to do or the non-violence movement or the himsa movement that Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela prescribed for revolutions and things like that.

I have this idea that I feel like people are kind of taking it the wrong way.

They're kind of misconstruing the idea behind it or the movement behind it.

I think there's some kind of mistake there and of course it might just be me that's thinking it that way.

So I wanted to kind of do this video to perhaps clarify it a bit.

A lot of times people are told to forgive right and of course I think forgiveness,

Self-forgiveness and forgiving other people for their misdemeanors or their transgressions is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.

You're doing the forgiving for yourself and if you read anything about forgiveness it's all about yourself.

You're doing it because you want to let go of that resentment,

That bitterness,

That anger,

That frustration,

That heaviness from within you.

You're letting go of it from within you and you are able to regenerate yourself.

You're able to recuperate.

You're able to heal yourself.

So all of the forgiving processes are all about forgive the other person not for them because perhaps they don't even remember that they've done anything to you.

Perhaps they don't even care anymore that they've done anything to you.

Perhaps they have no idea that they did something to you but you're doing it for yourself so that you are able to get over that experience.

You're able to gain closure perhaps.

You're able to move on and live your life healed in a manner where you can actually perhaps get into a relationship again if that's one of the things that you're trying to heal or you can talk to your parents again without anger if that's one of the things you're trying to heal or you can you know have a friendship with that person again if that's what you're trying to heal.

So whatever that healing is the healing process or the forgiving process is for you not for the other person.

Now what happens with a lot of the forgiveness is that a lot of people are like well you know they did something really terrible to me and I can never forget what they did.

I'll never forget.

I'll never forgive them.

Those are two separate things.

Just because you are forgiving someone doesn't mean that you're forgetting what they did.

You don't need to forget what they did and I'm not saying that you constantly remember it and constantly bring it up in your memories and constantly talk about it and think about it but I'm not saying that you forget what they've done and I kind of just want to share an anecdote here kind of which really helped me particularly and I'm gonna probably paraphrase it.

I'm not gonna say it particularly well but it's an anecdote and if I remember I'll share it below in the description.

Basically it's the idea that you know when you are forgiving a snake for example if it's a snake if you're thinking about the snake that you know can hurt you can bite you and kill you right.

So the idea is that if you're forgiving a snake right you're like oh I'm sorry you're a snake and I'm sorry for you that you have such a tough life I forgive you for being a snake you know you're a snake I'm sorry I forgive you right or if they bite you if a snake bites you you know you forgive them if you can forgive them you forgive them and you say I'm sorry that you bit me and I'm sorry you have to do these things in order to protect yourself I forgive you.

But it doesn't mean that you don't forget what a snake is capable of doing right and so the snake is capable of biting you the snake is capable of killing you snake is capable of putting venom in your body you don't forget that you don't forget that snake is capable of doing it you don't go to the snake over and over again wanting to be bitten or wanting to get get venom in your body you know that you need to keep a distance from the snake.

You know you don't forget what the snake is capable of but you forgive the snake.

I mean the snake can be anything really anything that you want to put instead of snake you can put that but the idea is that and for me when I look at the snake and the analogy of a snake I really think yeah right exactly right I know what a snake is capable of doing I don't think about it at all enough if it does bite me or for example a honeybee or like if you get a bee sting you don't suffer and you don't hate the bee forever and you don't want to kill the bee and all that stuff the bee just dies on its own I think but you don't hold that resentment forever you're like well it's the bees fault but I forgive it but you don't go to a hive and try to deliberately get bitten you stay away from it next time you know that you're next to a bee you try to step away you try to be like all right I don't want to be bitten again I haven't forgotten it but I have forgiven the bee right and I hope this kind of helps you because for me when I look at it it really does help me a lot because in a lot of cases what I was holding on to was the resentment because I was like I never want to forget because I never want to deal with this again because I want to be strong enough to know that I never have to deal with this again I don't want to forget that this happened because I don't want to repeat my experiences and that's what I'm basically I was trying to learn from my experience but the learning doesn't mean that you'd never forgive doesn't mean that you never let go of that resentment you forget you don't forget about it but you forgive right those are two completely different paradigms that we're dealing with here and so I wanted to really delineate the difference between them because I for myself I had a hardest time the hardest time thinking about this for the longest time and I wondered you know how how can I forgive because if I forgive I assumed that I'd forget as well and I would never and then I'd be dealing with the same issue over and over again for example if I forgave my ex who cheated on me that means I forget that men are capable of cheating and then I keep on putting myself into a situation again no I don't forget that yes men some men very few men are capable of cheating but I forgive that person because for me so that I can move on and then next relationship I can actually be in a relationship again otherwise I'll be like well all men are cheaters and no I can never forget and I could never forgive and I'm gonna live a single life forever because men suck you know that's obviously a lot of what we do in our heads we kind of create these stories in our heads so I wanted to hopefully and I hopefully did delineate the difference between the two for you because I noticed a lot of the comments that I get in from a lot of the viewers is basically about this it's like I will never forget I will never forgive because I can never forget what they've done to me you don't have to forget what they've done to you don't forget what they've done to you but you can forgive them and if you're forgiving them not for their sake but you're doing it for yourself and I've done many videos about forgiving your parents you know so you can heal or forgiving your exes so you can heal it's all for you it's the forgiving part is you're doing it to heal yourself you're not doing it for someone else and as soon as you can realize the selfishness of that situation I think a lot of us will be like well yeah okay well it's for me and that other person doesn't get any benefit out of it then maybe I'll do it you know because we are selfish in that manner somehow and egotistical and so it's fine you know if you're doing it just for you that's actually quite alright you're doing it for yourself you're gonna heal yourself and you're gonna notice that the next time you get into a relationship you're not gonna constantly be triggered by this new person because of what happened in the past and that's what happens to us is that we constantly get triggered in the future or in the present moment because it's something that happened in the past because if you haven't forgiven we have not forgotten obviously of course but you have you haven't forgiven as well right and the forgiving again is for you you've probably heard of this quote from the Buddha but it goes something like this you know holding on to anger is like holding a piece of hot coal in your hand and hoping that it burns the other person I'll say it again the Buddha says something like feeling anger or holding on to anger is like holding on to a piece of hot coal in your hand and hoping that it burns the other person so we hold on to anger we hold on to resentment we don't forgive because we're like oh I'm doing it because that person needs to know that they've done something wrong to me how are they gonna know they probably forgotten about it already probably don't remember what happened and of course you can remind them over and over again which is something what we do but what is that doing it's just keeping you in the past it's not allowing you to heal it's not allowing you to grow it's not allowing you to move past what happened in the past and then move on to the to the present moment that's why a lot of us spend hours and hours and hours overthinking and thinking about what happened in the past because we just can't forgive we can't forgive and therefore we can't move on right and so again let go of that piece of hot coal just drop it to the ground forgive for your own sake because it's burning your hand it is scalding your hand your hand is going to fall away it's going to be completely amputated because of that hot coal you keep on holding on to now of course it's your heart that's actually being scalded but that's okay so let go of that piece of hot coal it's for your sake it's not for that other person it's for you just let go and then you can move on and past it right so there's a big difference between forgiving and forgetting and I hope that I've been able to delineate it for you if you have questions about this please do comment below and I shall do a follow-up video I've been in a major focus in this year about forgiveness I'm not saying that I'm good at it I'm not saying that I'm doing a perfect job of it but I am saying that I'm trying very hard to make it a focus this year especially because there's a lot of things that I've been holding on to that are holding me back nothing to do with anyone else but they're holding me back right so you have to let it go if you have questions comment below again thank you so much for listening for watching and I shall see you the next time around bye for now

Reviews

Thank you so much for this. Simple wisdom that can be so hard! Do you have any recommendations for meditations or other practices for releasing anger and resentment? 🙏🏻

All good points. It’s a struggle .

Thank you, this was very insightful
J@<¥🌙

Thank you so much for that. This defiantly helps with forgiving my parents but not forgetting what they did to keep myself safe.

Makes a lot of sense. It’s also hard to fotgive but I am working on it. Namaste 🙏🏽💕💫