Apr 17, 2004, 12.00am IST
Janina Gomes.
We need to find truth, love and forgiveness even in the midst of hatred, destruction and pride. Napoleon said: "What astonishes me most in this world is the inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit". In so saying Napoleon touched upon an important principle of forgiveness. That forgiveness is creative and it springs from love. It is the ability to embrace the pain of injury to oneself, while extending one’s hands in love.
Forgiving is not easy. The hurt that others inflict on us haunts us from the past and sullies our future. Unfortunately we tend to identify forgiving with only forgetting. But, by learning to live in the present, we will enable ourselves to embrace the pain of the infliction and heal ourselves as well as others.
Often we let painful memories re-inflict pain. There's so much negativity attach-ed to the memory. To release the memory, Raymond Studzinski says, is to see the injuring party as a human person who like oneself lives in an imperfect world fraught with stress and conflict. Forgiveness is to accept what has happened as past and not as the final word on the other or oneself. That makes it creative.
Edward Guinan says: The heritage that martyrs, resisters and saints have left us is: "Love can and must be lived today, despite the pain and difficulty of life. Tomorrow will carry the tenderness and peace which we live now".
Most psychologists now acknowledge that an important aspect of forgiveness is to forgive oneself first for life exempts none from injury. To be good does not insulate one from hurt inflicted by others. Forgiveness meets the injurer with compassion. It acknowledges that we all have the same destructive tendencies and we carry within ourselves the ability to inflict pain on others.
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