As humans, we all make mistakes and expect every one else to forgive us. But when it comes to our forgiving others, we find it difficult. The reason may be, as Mahatma Gandhi said, “the weak can never forgive as forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
It may not have been easy for Mrs. Steins to forgive those who burnt alive her husband and two of her sons. Yet she did. Pope John Paul II forgave the person who shot and wounded him seriously. He also visited the convict in prison and forgave him.
One of the easiest ways to practise forgiveness is not to brood over the hurt others have caused to you but to remember the good things they have done. Any small hurt carried for long can weigh us down. At the end of the day, what is required is peace of mind and not pieces of mind. The best pillow for a sound sleep every night is to have a calm and peaceful head over our shoulders.
The other day I read this anecdote. Two friends were walking through a desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument and one slapped the other. The one who was slapped, without uttering a word, wrote on the sand: “Today my best friend slapped me on the face.”
They walked on, and a little ahead the friend who was slapped fell into an oasis and was about to drown, but his friend pulled him out. As they continued their journey, the friend who was saved wrote, not on sand but on a stone: “Today my best friend saved my life.”
When asked for the reason, he said: “When someone hurts us we should write it down on sand, where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it on stone where no wind can ever erase it.” Let us practise the art of forgiveness. We will live life happier.
© HT Media
