WHY FORGIVE?

There is a hard law ... When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. How should you forgive, and why? I can't tell you. It's probably the hardest thing you'll ever attempt to do. But I can tell you what I've seen and experienced personally: once you are able to let go of wrongs that have been done to you, it changes everything. It will change your relationships, your attitudes, your emotional make-up - your whole approach to living. It will give you a better life. Plus, you'll find that when you forgive, you're always a winner. You don't lose a thing. Because it's not a sign of weakness to love somebody who hurts you. It's a sign of strength.
Hope for a great-sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Sometimes, even when we recognize the need to forgive, we are tempted to claim that we cannot. It is simply too hard, too difficult - something for saints, maybe, but not the rest of us. We have been hurt just one time too many, we think, or misunderstood. Our side of the story has not been adequately heard. The strongest motivation for forgiveness is always the sense of having received forgiveness ourselves, or - if we do not have that - an awareness that, like everyone else in the human race, we are imperfect and have done things we need to be forgiven for. For me, the act of forgiveness carries a lot of power. It is an assertion of one's dignity to have the means and ability to forgive. .. It may be difficult to understand, because it turns conventional logic on its head, but idealistically speaking, I think that if there is to be peace, there has to be forgiveness ......
Truth without love kills, but love without truth lies.