---Does forgiveness mean forgetting?

Forgiveness and its benefits have largely been argued and discussed in the human psychology literature and holy books of different religions and religious dissimilar classifications. The authors posit if you forgive others, you actually provide yourself relief by forgetting their deeds, conducts, names and identifications. While religious books encouraged forgiveness because it will be useful and constructive for a person internal growth of peace and harmony and there are rewards for those who pardon others. By this information, it is easily observable that forgiveness has been associated with forgetting the deeds of the guilty or in other words, both forgiveness and forgetting are understood in interchangeable sense by the reader. Therefore, both the words could foster interpretation errors at the outset.

Should we think that forgiveness and forgetting are both similar concepts in the context of pardoning others?

Let’s explore if it really holds true.

Suppose there are two persons, A and C. Their personality attributes are unknown and it’s not confirm whether they are inflexible, angry, calm or tranquil but A’s present life productions show that he has some tangible achievements and received full credits for all his works whereas C is not working or studying. There is one similarity among their past life which reveals that both of them have gone through the most traumatic situations, encounter massive criticism, people even damaged their work and repeatedly tried to tarnish their image plus put them in financial crises, insulted them publicly and played politics against them at every step so precisely they all have been unfortunate who were not blessed with that much of a successful life because of peak of failures and falls in their lives previously.

If we also go through the same situations they have been into; should we think of forgiving people who ruined our lives or forgetting what they did to us?

Let’s see what both of them have to say about forgiving their enemies--

A’s response: I have heard from my surroundings so many times that forgiveness give oneself relief and makes oneself forget the pains attached with the past relationship. I personally appreciate whatever I listen and those people ideology as well who reassure forgiveness but I was completely unsuccessful when I myself tried to do this. I mean I really thought to forgive my enemies and forget about them. Forgetting was hell of a difficult task. They used to pop up on my mind whenever I see similar situations in a movie, or when I was reading a book and watching news. One day I went on a party and I saw one of the individuals with whom I had abandoned all my connections. I thought I might have forgiven this guy but no! The time I saw him, his wrongdoings literally started revolving around my head. The way he used to see and talk made me realize he is dangerous. I started ignoring his presence also. Now I think I could not even forget him neither forgive him otherwise I at least had shaken hands with him.

C’s response: I disagree completely with whatever I have heard about forgiveness. There is just no point of forgiving people who make your life absolutely miserable. But since I am quiet religious so I thought to go ahead with that. I started overlooking the deeds of the people but with the heavy heart and so I tried to reestablish my connections with my enemies. I just couldn't forget all the damages they caused me but I approached them and offered my friendship all-over again. But since they are in my memory so it still hurts me somewhere inside and I further feel it’s not safe to get closer to them too much.

Analysis of A and C's responses:

• A was opened to forgiveness ideologies and tried to practically perform them.
• A tried to forgive but failed.
• A could not forget because all the functions he performed to forget; reminded him more of his past life and the people who were involved in ruining it.
• C did not decide to forgive at the first place because of his reluctance to believe the entire concept. But he did because he was religious.
• By doing so, he was still unsuccessful in making himself forgetting the heart-wrenching people and the events.

We can draw following inferences from the responses made:

• Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting your enemies.
• We take into account the way human brain functions. The hardware system fitted on top of our heads does not allow the deletion of memory at all.  We still remember the people whom we met in the past or when we were a child or a teenager. Brain keeps the data of the people either good or bad.
• Things which cause us damages and break us into pieces have higher tendency to remain in our brains.
• Forgiveness which means to reestablish your connections does not have any impact on forgetting the same individuals. Hence, ‘’forgetting enemies’ wrongdoings lowers down the stress level’’ is a big question because in either cases of being friends with them or not, will never make you forget the injuries to your heart and well-being.
• In many cases, having an encounter with your enemies again will rejuvenate everything and you would feel more insecure being with them. This type of decision can increase the chances of having emotional stress.

Note: Both A and C nowhere mentioned they will take revenge therefore decision of not forgiving does not necessarily leads one to take revenge. However, silent retaliation is observed here. Further, human brain amazing quality of keeping long and short memories influenced A and C's decision of forgiving or not forgiving; therefore the concept of fear of enemies cannot be implemented here.