When you want to forgive someone simply forgive. Don’t
judge whether the person is worthy or not. What matters is whether you feel
forgiveness at your very core.
Think about it. When does the context of
forgiveness arise? Forgiveness becomes relevant when someone has acted in an
irrational, resentful, violent and/or a hurtful way with you. Your hurt is
causing you to feel miserable about the episode and you want to see that the
person responsible for this is admonished, made accountable or even punished.
This is what anyone will normally want done. But as long as the act of
reprimand or retribution is not complete you will continue to grieve, you will
continue to suffer. In some cases, the person who hurts you may realize her
mistake and seek your forgiveness. It’s possible then that you may or may not
forgive her. If you choose not to, you will still be carrying the angst of the
injury, the hurt in you. But, if in any situation, you choose to forgive, you
will be liberated - instantaneously.
 |
| Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, the Rajiv Assassination, Nalini Murugan Picture Courtesy: Internet |
There’s so much attention on the people
responsible for former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins, with the
Indian Supreme Court, commuting the death sentences of some more of them to Life
terms recently. This development, in the context of forgiveness, brings the
focus back to what happened in March 2008. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, Rajiv’s daughter,
visited Nalini Murugan, one of those convicted in the assassination conspiracy,
in Vellore jail in Tamil Nadu. According to what TIME magazine reported then: “The
two women both wept when they met. Toward the end of their meeting, they
compared stories about their children's births (both have had caesareans) and
even swapped small gifts, though neither revealed what they were. Nalini, whose
initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a few years ago after
intervention by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling Congress Party,
apparently found Priyanka's visit Life-changing. Nalini told her brother P. S.
Bhagyanathan that she feels as if "all my sins have been washed off by
Priyanka's visit... I feel she has pardoned me by calling on me at the
prison... I am indebted to her all my life." Whether Priyanka explicitly
offered forgiveness will probably remain between them. In her statement,
Priyanka said that "meeting with Nalini was my way of coming to peace with
[the] violence and loss that I have experienced." Perhaps Priyanka was not trying to forgive so much as she was
trying not to hate — and their meeting was a very private gesture that, after
becoming public (through a media leak), has come to appear heartbreakingly
heroic. "I don't believe in anger, hatred, and violence," Priyanka said
simply in her statement. "And I refuse to allow it to overpower my life."”
Priyanka’s effort to reach out, and to be
human, in the face of such a traumatic personal loss, is as awakening now as it
was then. That she chose to do what she did, without investing to evaluate
whether Nalini deserved any forgiveness, if at all, or not, is inspiring.
We must remember that when we forgive someone,
we let go of all the pent up, wasteful emotions like anger and hatred, within
us. We forgive someone for our own sake first. And through our inner cleansing
and peace, we help the one we forgive too to move on in Life. Forgiveness frees the person who is forgiving and therefore
is not dependent on whether the person receiving it is deserving or not. If you
understand this perspective, you will never carry any resentment, any hurt, any
suffering in you – ever. And you will be at peace!
No comments:
Post a Comment