Because our love is strong...

Buddha once said, "Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind." 

With the same idea in mind, a Christian theologian named Lewis Smedes says, "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you."

And Mahatma Gandhi adds that, "the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." 

It seems to be the common consensus that forgiveness is one of the many secrets to personal growth and inner strength. I have a couple of questions about this:

1. Where is the connection between forgiveness and forgetting? They seem to be tied together a lot of the time. If you forget without forgiving, are you still carrying that burden on your mind?...are you still a prisoner waiting to be freed? Can you ever fully forget if you never forgive?

2. Why is the emphasis always put on forgiving instead of apologizing? We seem to think of forgiveness as this noble duty that people should always strive for. But if you've been wronged and the cause of it has never extended an apology, why is it your burden to forgive? Gandhi says it makes you strong, but I don't know that it's fair to call someone weak for not releasing another of the wrong they've done them without first receiving compensatory regards. 

I hold the concept of forgiveness on somewhat of a pedestal. I do think that you will never be fully free of something until you forgive, but I also think that forgiveness isn't 100% necessary to forget. In addition, I don't think that you're obligated to forgive someone if you haven't been offered a sincere and honest apology--that goes the opposite way too though, if you have been offered the apology, then pure forgiveness should be your ultimate goal. 

I guess what I'm feeling is somewhat of an annoyance at the plethora of rhetoric that tells us we must forgive or else we are weak and chained to our past. This ideology lets people off the hook even if they've really hurt another person. I don't understand why we value forgiveness and simultaneously teach people that, as writer P.G Wodehouse says, “it is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

We have to meet in the middle. With a sincere apology, forgive and forget. Without it, do the same, but only if you want to.