Apologies and Forgiveness: Do you know the rationale for them?

People are genuinely having conversations about the popular statement that speaks about forgiving and forgetting. To some, they would forgive and forget. Others say they can forgive but forgetting is not possible. We also have people who won't forgive or forget.

By your definition, which of these attitude best defines how you react to an apology?

You see, as far as we are alive and relating with people, there will always be potential for issues to appear on the table. It is obvious that these things happen and people always risk offending another person.

When you get offended, betrayed or mistreated by people, you will always have valid grounds to hold some grudge against them. That's how life works, but we will try to approach this post from an angle where we all can see reasons to let go of all those grudges we are bearing in our hearts.

First of all, if you feel offended and you are yet to forgive the offender, the first thing you have to do is to figure out the exact thing that is holding you back from forgiving the person.

Maybe the person hasn't asked for forgiveness. Well, that's a different case altogether. But, when someone messed up and approaches you with the following statement;

• They tell you what they did wrong
• They tell you why they did something wrong
• They tell you what they learned from doing that
• They say they wouldn't do that again &
• They ask for your forgiveness.

Hmmm... What else can they say?

That's a pretty decent apology and if you are the one on the receiving end of that apology, you will most likely forgive the person because we are imperfect in our little ways. We make mistakes and whenever we see what we did wrong, we would most likely want to be forgiven.

The thing you have to take note of here is that as far as there are apologies, there will always be forgiveness. When people make an apology, the rationale for forgiveness will be based on what the person learned from the previous mistake.

If they learned their lessons and are ready to avoid messing things up again, it will be a lot easier to forgive them. But if you are surrounded by people who repeat the same 'mistake' over and over again, accepting their apology and forgiving them in the real sense of forgiveness will be a really hard thing to do.

While we are speaking of 'people' as offenders, you also need to put yourself in that category. If you mess things up, learn from it and apologize genuinely.

Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop Or Comma
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