When we were making the birthday guest list, P gave me 7 names. Yes…. 7. Out of 23 kids in her class she gave me only 7! I kept telling her, add some more but she was like, that’s it. A couple of weeks passed. The invitations were out and I had received most rsvps. P comes and tells me ‘Ma don’t invite that boy for my birthday’ and I was like I already did and his mom has confirmed his presence. There is nothing I can do now. She said tell her not to come. And I said P that’s rude. I can’t do that. If I have already invited someone I cannot say no to them. What’s the matter? Did you have a fight with him? She said something which I couldn’t figure out. Then she thought for a few minutes and said. ‘Ok Ma , it’s fine if he comes. I’ll handle it’. And it was all cool. I even asked her a couple of days after that if everything was cool between him and her and she said ya all good. He can come for my birthday. He came and they all had a great time!

It just amazed me how quickly these kids can forgive and forget. A quality we adults don’t have. We will hate a person. We will hold grudges. We will not talk properly to someone for years. Sometimes even cut off that person from our lives. You might say life issues are bigger than childhood tiffs. They sure are…. but if we learn to forgive…. life would be simpler for us all. You forgive someone and it will lighten up your heart so much. It’s like a load off your chest. Try it. Even I have held grudges for years. Slowly when I realised that they are pointless after such a long time, I let go. And trust me, it feels awesome. I might have held on to them for the wrong reasons anyway.

Forgiving is not easy. Your memories don’t just erase the second you think about it. I wish it were that easy. To press a delete button and the memory would be made free to over write. Or maybe even format my brain to start all over again. But it’s not. So we have to think of ways to be able to tackle it. To “make the memory free to over write”. You have to make yourself believe that the person is forgivable now. Maybe even make yourself believe that what that person did to you was not that bad at all. It’s you who is making it look that bad. Try looking at it from a different angle. It might change your perspective completely.

I came across a therapy once in which the therapist would cut cords of attachment between you and some other person in your life dead or alive. These are all cords formed through the energies you exchange with that person. So the cords contain “stuff” which are unpleasant energies stored in it during some particular interaction with that person. The therapy believes that once the cord is cut it allows you to move on and not be stuck mentally and held back due to that “stuff”.

Forgiving kind of works the same way.