Forgiveness as the Way Forward

Everyday, I disagree with someone. It maybe over how tidy my room is, where people sit in the classroom or the nature of reality. I think we all face these experiences within our daily lives. But sometimes we take it too far. We are personally offended by how another treats us, infringing on how we want to use our time. We hold it against them, sulking over feelings of injustice and resentment, letting it poison our thoughts and actions. It festers, making relationships tense, with pangs of guilt and annoyance permeating the atmosphere. This is just human nature. But I think we need to fight it. I propose that this kind of behaviour on an amplified level is the cause of many of the problems within the world, and it is only love and forgiveness that can heal this and allow us as a community to progress and reach a greater state of being.

Why do I say this? The schismatic and individualistic society we live in has bred a new discord between groups of people, leaving great grievances hanging over the situation like a dark cloud. It is not only on a large scale that such feuds take place, but on a person to person basis. Looking at my own personal experience, arguments and transgressions have broken many a valuable friendship which are only recognised as treasures after it is too late. It is sad. And yet, so many people relish these things. They make great gossip, spark the most sensational of rumours and allow us to bitch about people without feelings of guilt or remorse cropping up. This can only lead to the creation of backstabbing, indulgent people, which there are many of in our social circles. And they cause much pain, much suffering and much torment. Even the relatively good our sometimes guilty of such acts.

Yet, the amazing thing about all this is we can actually fix this most divisive of problems.

To heal the world, we must be prepared to love our fellow human beings. Not in a fuzzy kind of way, like in the Teletubbies, but in an altogether more sophisticated sense. To love someone is to want the greatest good for them, which you will be willing to offer yourself as a servant in humility to bring this about. This doesn't mean you don't disagree with people, indeed if you sincerely think that how they behave or think is detrimental to what would be the greatest good for them, you should be willing to tell them how you feel. And crucially, it involves respect for the one you love, and an understanding that to generate a mutual union between the two of you is the best possible state of affairs.

Now it is a fact of life that people will fall out. But if our fellow human is truly sorry for their wrong doing, should we not forgive them? If they realise that they had done a bad thing, or not considered you properly, as a person who craves the best for them and wants to restore that precious union between the two of you, should you not accept their apology? Forgiveness is key in fixing the dark and bleak world we live in. Advocates of this view such as Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Gandhi all tapped into the potential of love, and its action in forgiveness. Only this restores the vitality of life, the vibrancy of life and the glories that are to be realised. Apartheid was destroyed, oppression's have been crushed and barriers torn down by the power of forgiveness, and I encourage all of you reading this to follow suit in tapping into its potential.

So if you and another person have had a disagreement, make the first move for reconciliation. Recognise that blind ignorance and denial helps nothing, and that only love and forgiveness can take you both back to where you belong on the road to majesty, wonder and glory. Don't just agree that this is right, don't just think it is right, but live as though you believe that what I say is right. Then you will find that the impossible will become the possible.