Thought for the day thirteen

Forget and forgive

If we need peace of mind, this is the most powerful tool which will aid to very large extent. We end up developing bad feeling in our heart for a person who harms or insults us.

We forget that the insult or the injury happened to us one time only. But by keeping on thinking about it and nourishing the grievance, the wound keeps getting bigger and it never gets healed.

The act of forgetting and forgiving should be developed to overcome this. There is God and the Karma. If someone hurts us, he would be answerable to the God.

Do we have so many lives to keep on harping about these things?

The best way is to forgive and forget because many a times we would have fought about some trivial thing.

We should move on in our life.

Some of our best friends would have been separated from us for silly reason. The heated moment would bring out animals from us. The words slip out before we could stop. Once spoken the words can’t be taken back. The damage is done. If the friendship is beyond this trivia, it survives. Otherwise, the bad blood flows between them.

If one of them takes a step forward to forgive and forget, the friendship survives, which can be called time-tested. Otherwise, other people will definitely have a field day talking all rot about the ‘so-called’ friendship. Both the parties will suffer silently because they are separated by a stupid reason. Now they are unable to make a contact. The loss of peace of mind leads to lack of concentration at whatever thing they take up. This further leads to bad name, may be suspension. This may sound little high handed, but I have seen cases like this. So, if you have erred with your close friend for a silly reason, please make it a point to forget the incident and forgive the person. Go and hug him/her and make sure the pond of friendship is again pure and crystal clear. You may not wait for the other person to take the first step. What stops you? Your ego? What is ego in front of a time-tested friendship? Or the friend who was with you in thick and thin all these years.

Suppose the other person does not respond favorably to your advances of re-establishment of friendship? Why should one feel denigrate in front of a close friend? The situation might have led to this misunderstanding. Then we leave it. The water in the pond should not be stirred (like queries and pestering).

Once the water is clear and all the dirt gets settled under, the situation would be seen very clearly and may be the other person understands and takes a step forward to bury the hatchet.

When Lord Sri Krishna forgives so many mistakes of Shishupala, Bheeshma, Duryodhana who were enemies as far as the links between them are concerned, we are a very small fry. We can definitely forgive our friends.

Lord Rama offered to forgive Ravana many times. But his death was destined to happen in the hands of Rama. So, he died.

I was talking to my friend M. He used to move around with another colleague of his. Both used to come up for evening snacks. They were very friendly, chatting and eating together. They were almost a pair.

I asked one of them who is a friend of mine what happened. He came out with his story. The other person, let us call him S, suddenly asked my friend M not to move with him to all the places.

The reason given was not encouraging. S told M that he has family and he is not of ‘that’ type. My friend looks little timid, a musician. He too has told S that he has a family. Now no talk. I believe someone made an unsavory comment about their moving together in the office.

M was hurt to a very large extent. After one month of suffering,  he has recovered.

Now S chats with him, messages him saying that I don’t mind you talking to me in the night or chatting with me. But I don’t want to be seen with you in the office.

Do you think it is fair?

M has forgiven S. He has forgotten the misgivings of S. But what is M’s mistake?