Love #3

Forgive and forget. Some say to forgive is easier than to forget. You might have forgiven the person that wronged you, but every time you look at the fler’s face, the sour memories come back to haunt you. What then?

But we’re humans. We screw up all the time. We will screw up, and when we decide to own up to our mistakes and seek forgiveness, we would naturally hope the other party would forgive us. If so, we should accord others the same treatment we seek.

Love keeps no record of wrong.

When you really think about this statement, you’ll realize how ridiculously hard it is to keep no record. Somewhere deep down, we have this sense of entitlement to “justice”, that there is a scoreboard and because the other fler screwed up, we are in the lead and the onus is on them to make up for it. We hold the wrong of the fler over their head whenever we have the opportunity.

But I think the same quote makes sense – “Love does not need to be fair or equal. It just needs to be real”. Yes, the other person messed up. But holding it over their head is not going to help them. Imagine for a moment your son is playing by the swimming pool, and you tell him to stay away or he’ll fall in. He doesn’t listen and slips in and starts to drown. You decide at that moment to “forgive” him, i.e. dive in and save him. But imagine sometime in the future he wants to learn to swim, and you keep bringing up the same issue.

Humans are natural learners. I like to think that we can also learn how not to continuously be idiots. If so, then we should give others the benefit of doubt, that we move on from the previous mistake committed.

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Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others.