Friday, July 25, 2014

Guilt and Forgiveness

Every individual is born different. Each one of us strive hard to be a better person in life. Many inspirational writers have written countless number of books on how to be happy and contented both personally and professionally. There are times when such books really help you to think in a positive way. If you have ever read such books, i'am sure you would have noticed the stress the authors lay on different virtues like patience, courteousness, gratitude, determination, awareness, commitment, confidence, sharing, sensitivity and many others  in their writing. Even though the writing seems to be very compelling it takes a lot of effort to bring about a change in your personality. But when it does, and if its for good there will be people to appreciate. 

Amidst these and various other virtues, somewhere the virtue of forgiveness is what catches my attention. Probably because, if all other things needs a bit of efforts and a change in attitude, forgiveness is one such thing which requires a command from your soul. You must have heard the phrase " Forgive and Forget", I do not say I disagree with it, but when its comes to implementing, it might be one of the most difficult thing ever done. The degree of mistake for which a person seeks forgiveness might be different and solely depends on the forgiver's perspective. 

I'am mostly referring to the mistakes which are unintentional and in most cases hurt the people we care for. For instance, once my aunt accidentally dropped one of my favorite mug, at that moment even though I was very well aware of the fact that it was not intentional, I kinda felt bad for the broken mug and not her. It took some time for me to realize that its was not her mistake. By that time my behavior had already made her feel guilty for nothing. The moment I said its fine I could feel her relax and take that burden of guilt down. This was just a small example, may be my behavior also was not intentional but, I made her feel sorry and gave least importance to her emotions. As quoted by M.K.Gandhi ji "Forgiveness is the attribute of strong" by forgiving you are not only relieving others from the burden but instead helping yourself to let go and move forward.  

Forgiveness comes later, but guilt is much more horrible thing. Be it any situation, if a mistake has happened, you pause for a moment and put yourself in other's shoes, in no time you will realize that you would never want to be on the other side of the mistake. According to me, there is nothing worst than the guilt feeling. There might be situations where it gets really hard for you to forgive, by doing so you are getting trapped in an unwanted swirl which will never let you come out of it and always pull you down. Instead, as people nowadays say hug it out, I would say will act as the best medicine in that situation. I say this because during all this time we completely forget that there are much more important things in life to be taken care of and much more things to enjoy and most importantly you will have one less thing to worry about.