What comes into
your mind every time you say “love”? Is that warmth, affection, tolerance or
understanding? Each aforementioned word
does define love in a whole way. Love may bring warmth even in the most
freezing winter, melting every severe hatred and blooming the pieces of
forgiveness. Love is an ability to forgive. In their book “Why Good Things Happen
to Good People”, Post and Neimark (2011) propose that forgiveness is the
crucial expression of love. It needs enough courage, empathy and determination
as the forgiveness is all about process. They also come up with a real story
about the buffetings toward forgiveness.
A woman whose
name doesn’t want to be announced recalls about the most devastating moment in
her life. She lost her Dad when she was 20 because of car accident. She and her
Dad was about one turn away from their house when the accident happened. A
careless driver used the right traffic lane to overtake and ignored traffic
light. He stepped on the gas to overtake a truck. The truck hit the middle
barrier and tore his Dad’s car apart.
His Dad’s body was totally shattered. Then, the careless driver got out
of the car then grumbled about his scratched car paint. He was sentenced only 40
hours for people service.
She was really
broken. No words can describe how unfair the life is. His Dad’s soul was considered as equal as 40-hour
sentence. Her Dad death affected her
mother’s health. In 28, she lost her mother too because of cancer.
She needs a
couple years to forgive the man. Until someday, she talk to herself that “I
have a faith. It is apparent that he deserves forgiveness. I keep trying to
pray for the man, for his better life. I do hope that he will grow.” With the
remnant of love she has, she is able to forgive the worst damn thing in her
life.
I believe the
above story is capable of evoking our conscience to contemplate about forgiving
and being forgiven. It is suggested that when we find ourselves difficult to
forgive someone, let’s think how relieved when we’re being forgiven. There are several researches that show the
benefit of forgiveness. Charlotte Witvliet, a psychologist from Hope College in
Michigan conducted study toward 71 students. She asked them to think about
someone who have hurt them and reacted in their heart whether giving
forgiveness or not. The result shows that those who don’t give reaction for forgiveness
suffer from physiological stress. While forgiveness reaction were reported for
leading students to peaceful body and mind. It is concluded, that playing the
pain in the brain over and over again will get ourselves burdensome. Post and
Neimark (2011) describe this condition as carrying potato pouch on the shoulder
everywhere we go. We bring it to workplace, to restroom, to gym, even to bed. The
potato is the symbol of hatred. We put one potato into the pouch every time we
rewind the detestation. Day by day, the pouch gets weightier and our shoulder
couldn’t stand carrying it. How tortured we are, aren’t we? So, let’s learn to forgive and grow our
ability to love.
Thanks to MSSF for always understanding me.
