THE FORGIVEN

Mistakes happen. To err is, after all, a human trait. But forgiveness… that’s a whole new ball game.

People who err, forgive themselves. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes, however heinous the fault. There’s a justification for everything. The milk of human kindness gushes forth to wash away every wrong in the blink of an eye. It’s amazing. It’s survival.

It takes a little longer to forgive someone who’s wronged you. For there, the bigger battle is not that you’ve been wronged and someone needs to be forgiven; it’s that your Ego can’t take the betrayal and the pain and the ease with which your trust has been taken with a smile and kind words, lovingly caressed and kissed as you watched, but crumpled heartlessly, had a knife thrust into it to the hilt and turned, and squashed under the foot the moment your back was turned. So forgiveness takes its time. And the wait can be a long one. For memories of the deception keep the Ego hurting and the heart bleeds silently, and tears well up in the eyes, only to evaporate into thin air before they spill over, and that slow torment crushes the spirit. But the forgiveness does come.

But the biggest irony of them all – the one thing that punches through the spirit time and again with ever-increasing venom and exponentially rising force and ruthlessness -- is that those who have been wronged are never forgiven. For though they may forgive and extend the olive branch again and again, even at the risk of leaving themselves open to becoming the subject of that same betrayal one more time, the betrayer knows the consequence of his/her action. Knows the pain and the suffering it has caused. And that pricks the conscience. A more powerful emotion is also at play here. The betrayer feels guilty and indignant and angry that someone he/she has wronged has a bigger heart and is more resilient. Weighed down by a feeling that this person holding up the olive branch is a constant reminder of their dark deeds, the tormented soul reacts with a cold shoulder and vinegary comments designed to hurt even further and extend the distance, and burn the bridge before it’s built.

Remorse is a lonely road; and a self imposed one at that. And in the end, the soul is condemned to endure Hell for far longer than it is originally destined to.