Have you ever wondered why it is much easier to forgive than forget? As children we are taught right from wrong, good from bad, through early experiences with our parents. We learn how to trust people or not dependent on those early relationships where we had little or no control. It is extremely mind boggling that we can remember things that happen to us in our younger years especially if they weren’t pleasant. Unpleasant stimuli can be easily retrieved in our memory banks because when the event takes places it is often times linked with a strong emotions. Our fight or flight mechanism goes into play by means of invoking a response to protect us. Our hearts race, palms get sweaty, eyes water, we may get a headache, or become overwhelmed with fear. This is the only way our body knows how to protect us from harm. We learn to avoid anything and everything that we perceive to bring harm to us. We learn to distrust people and situations because in our minds we have connected it to something within our past. We do not live life through broken links but through connected ones. Every time we go through something that new event is linked to something in our past, rather it’s done intentionally or not. A woman who experiences a divorce for the first time, may link that bad experience to not having a father, and or being improperly equipped with tools that would prepare her for that part of her life.
She may have had numerous bad relationship prior to the marriage that in her mind shows a trend and a connection. One can even take it a little further. If the woman was reared by a mother alone she may have been trained to believe that she needs no one, and thus carries the independent fasaude that only confirms what she already believes. Even though the marriage could have worked out in her mind she is constantly ready to fight or take flight if she gets any warning of an impending doom. She becomes part of her own fate because she already has a negative image in her mind about the inability of a man to stick around or not cause her pain. So she learns to merely exist in her relationship, and when the walls come tumbling down her beliefs get reinforced. She never addresses what she may have done, or could have done to make things better.
When someone hurts us we may forgive them, because to not do so only inflicts more harm to ourselves because why we are sulking in what someone did to us the other person has already moved on and forgotten it. Forgetting is just a statement because we never truly forget because it has already been imprinted in our minds.
Be mindful of the things you do and say to a person. The words that come out of your mouth just because your angry, frustrated, and tired may just be the trigger for another person to confirm his or her reason for avoiding, distrusting people and situations. You may be just speaking your mind, or getting it off your chest, but remember that actions has a cause and a effect. While the person may be able to forgive you, based on his or her moral teachings, forgetting could take time, or may be impossible and acts as a scar or wound.. Once it is said it forms a link to things in a person’s past, so we all have to learn to be keeper’s of each others heart’s. Being human means we have the ability to connect with the world around us through actions. We have the ability to choose to be bearers of good fruit, and not bad. What do you Choose?
It is fair to say I forgive you, but I cant forget!