What sweeter revenge than forgiveness? (2024)

When you are smarting from pain inflicted by someone, and trying to figure out ‘why’, the most difficult thing to do is the thing they call Divine to forgive. And yet, try it out. It’s in fact the sweetest form of revenge!

To forgive someone doesn’t mean condoning their actions. It just means absolving yourself of the hurt and pain and getting back control over your own life and emotions. It means easing the burden of revenge and hatred from your shoulders and getting on with life. You don’t forgive for another; you do it for yourself to come to terms with your emotions and to attempt a closure on an episode that refuses to let go of you. If you don’t do that, years later you would still be smarting from an action, stuck in a painful time zone, while the perpetrator of all that pain has moved on and put the incident behind him. So, rather than him, you are the one living out the consequences of his action!

Forgiving someone is the best way of stepping neatly out of that time zone and ensuring that they, rather than you, suffer the fall-out of the episode. When Priyanka Vadra decided to meet Nalini, co-accused in her father, Rajiv Gandhi’s murder, she didn’t go for Nalini’s sake; she went for her own peace of mind to attempt a closure on the grief that has haunted her for years. She went not so much to forgive, but to be released of the pain that had her in its grip. With this act she released herself of the burden of the past. If her tears also released the guilt Nalini had held onto for years, then that was incidental.

Priyanka’s was indeed the gesture of a mature, evolved human being, one that instantly establishes her credentials as the scion of the Gandhi dynasty. In her own words, meeting Rajiv’s killer was her way of coming to peace with the experiences of violence and loss in her life. She declared that she wouldn’t allow anger, violence and hatred to take over her life.

For those of us standing on the wrong side of forgiveness, wrapped up in our pain and sense of personal hurt, it is difficult to understand how someone can possibly forgive another who has hurt them terribly. A colleague, now married with children, confesses that till date, after 16 years of the episode, she still hasn’t been able to forgive her lover for jilting her in her youth! She spends time thinking about revenge and wants to see herself vindicated.

What is she gaining from keeping that hurt and feelings of vengeance close to her chest? Just a lot of pain and regret that probably blights her present moments too, while the former lover leads a happy life, blissfully unaware of the negative energy she carries for him. Chances are that were he to hear this, he would be delighted that she still carries a torch for him despite his rejection so many years ago. It would be far easier to forgive if we understand that the forgiveness is for us, not the perpetrator of the pain. If we understand that by forgiving, we are not condoning, just moving on. That by putting the episode behind us we are not accepting a relationship on the same terms with the one who hurt us.

Forgiving is not forgetting, and neither should it be. Because if we forget, we open ourselves again to the same kind of hurt and instead of getting a closure on the eternal cycle of pain, we have just thrown ourselves back into it. Forgiveness doesn’t necessitate reconciliation. In other words, forgive so you can move on in life, but don’t forget, so you don’t repeat the same mistakes again. As with any other episode, carry the lessons learnt rather than the pain from an incident.

It is far easier to forgive someone when you believe that we are all responsible for our actions and pay for the same. We can let go of feelings of vengeance when we understand that God has His own way of balancing out everything. The Law of Karma dictates that we benefit with our good actions and suffer for our bad acts.

By the act of forgiving, we wash ourselves with a positive flow of energy that has been medically proven to be beneficial to health such as reducing chronic backache and depression and lessening stress levels, and to even help HIV-AIDS patients live longer!
So, isn’t it then easy to forgive and leave the other person wondering at your largesse, while you are secure in the knowledge that no wrong will ever go unpunished? What sweeter revenge than forgiveness?

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