by Isabella Tancredo

Created on: May 19, 2009   Last Updated: May 21, 2009

It's really difficult to tell someone that it's alright to not forgive; especially that there's two reasons for someone having to forgive. One is quite obvious; forgiving someone for doing another wrong and the other is forgiving oneself for their own wrongdoing.

In either case, if forgiveness is even slightly possible then it should be done even for their own sake. Someone may ask, How can it be good for your own sake if you're forgiving someone else? Well, not forgiving someone means that a person is angry and it's difficult to not sound like Yoda when I say that not forgiving someone means that a person is angry regardless of what level it's on, it's still anger and being angry all the time is energy draining and why would someone want to waste their energy being angry when they could use it for something more positive? Anger eats away at people and it's not healthy because it's stressful as well; thinking back on the situation and all those negative emotions coming back really strong regardless of how much time has passed. Everyone should have the chance to move on with their lives and to grow as a person.

There are people who forgive the killer of their loved one; not for the murderer/killer's sake but for theirs to have closure. These people understand that capital punishment or even incarceration will not bring back their loved one and that people are put through the legal system because their actions have been recognized by the law as illegal and therefore they must be processed for their actions not who they are as a person.

In a case of someone being angry towards someone else need to understand that at some point, the situation won't have any real meaning anymore and that it needs to be accepted as happening and finally forgive them.

In the case of forgiving oneself, that's even more difficult because it is an internal battle. A way that forgiveness towards oneself is to get forgiveness from whomever else it concerns and then knowing that person is alright then perhaps forgiveness towards their own person can begin.

From personal experience I must admit that putting my own advice to practice is really hard to go through and accomplish. Currently, I can't find the ground to forgive three people whom claim to of ever been related to me; two of them disowned me and the other spoke insultingly about my parents and claim to be related to myself and my immediate family. It upsets me thinking back to the situations that were basically bridge burning

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