Is to Forgive to Forget?
On turning the other cheek....or not
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Dear Bolu,
My writing to you today is motivated by seriousness and not leisure. The truth is that I am never serious except on occasions where I absolutely need to be, say when there is a bowl of freshly pounded yam and egusi1 before me, good Lord! Sadly, such occasions rarely happen as my pounding skills are not at the level they used to be. I mean, after five thrusts of the pestle, my back begins to ache and clusters of sweat droplets densely populate my face. It is too much of an embarrassing sight for me to reenact so don't get too excited, you won't have a chance to make more mockery of me.
Now, to the serious matter that prompted this letter. A little while ago, I came across an elegantly written prose that was flavored with a couple of themes, one of which was forgiveness. You would agree with me that forgiveness is not as interesting a theme as love and hate. By interesting, I refer to the quality of being widely popular and sensational. It is not at all surprising that that is the case because forgiveness can be easily seen as a characteristic or an offshoot of love. But seeing it as such encourages us to gloss over what forgiveness means and should mean. In fact, too little seems to have been said and written about forgiveness, and evidently, that feeds the narrative that it is a rather uninteresting subject.
In all, I would say that we have a sense of what forgiveness is—beyond the definition of the word, of course—and we are probably not far from the truth. But I had a thought and another and one more. I realized that there are some confounding aspects of this unpopular subject, the first of which essentially simplifies to the question—is to forgive to forget?
If you did not know any better and I whispered in your ears that "Forgive and Forget" is the title of a 2005 hit track (or album) that took the Nigerian music industry by storm, you probably won't bat an eyelid. It actually does sounds like a record P-Square or 2Face2 could have pulled off in their prime. That is not a slight to them, no. It is, rather, a tip of the hat to their talent and industry. But frankly, I'd be surprised if there is no song with that title. It's just one of those things artists do, you see.
In any case, the phrase "forgive and forget" implies that forgiving is distinct from forgetting. They might go together like pounded yam and egusi, but they are equally distinct like the pair. As kids, it was one of those things we said. When big-head Ola (Olas tend to have big heads, by the way, it's one of the unspoken rules of naming ceremonies) accidentally knocks Ayo's ice cream to the ground, Ayo would, in a raging rave of madness snap his fingers and vow to retaliate. You would hear Ayo, at that moment, with the pain of losing a priced possession, utter words along the lines of "I will do my own back". It’s terrible grammar, yes, but we didn’t care. And after calls for him to forgive and forget, he might decide to let go of his anger and live out a future in which he does not exact vengeance on Ola.
In Ola and Ayo's tale, it is not wrong to say that Ayo forgave Ola. But did Ayo forget? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose it depends on your definition of "forgetting". Is to forget to permanently erase a single memory from one's mental archives? If yes, then Yakubu's miss at the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the underwhelming conclusion of HIMYM3 are on the list of the things I'd like to forget. Your list might include the unappetizing ending of the Game of Thrones series, for starters.
Now, is it possible to permanently delete a memory? Well, at the risk of championing the cause of conspiracy theorists, the CIA4 might have a drug or method that serves the purpose of selectively deleting memories. By and large, however, it isn't realistic to consider it feasible that we all can, of our own volition, delete specific memories from our minds. So it stands to reason that if to forget is not to erase, then it must mean to live out a future that is not influenced or affected by the memory of an event. It is to act, in Ayo's case, like Ola had no hand in the unfortunate demise of his ice cream. Ah, but isn't that already encapsulated in the definition of forgiveness? It is and it isn't! I'm just as confounded as you are, but I will try to explain my position as best as I can.
For the sake of clarity, my use of the word, "forgiveness" does not apply to situations where one commits a crime, disobeys a rule, or violates the terms of a contract. Rather, it mostly concerns scenarios where, in our communal living, we get aggrieved over matters that aren't necessarily settleable in court, say if you knock Ayo's ice cream to the ground or insult a friend.
If forgiveness is defined simply as letting go of negative feelings (including the thirst for vengeance) towards someone for something they did, then it certainly doesn't imply forgetting. This is, I've come to realize, what we commonly perceive as forgiveness. It is also the more convenient definition as it does not oblige you to let people off without punishing them for an offense.
However, if forgiveness is defined as letting go of negative feelings towards someone for an offense as well as not wishing to punish them for said offense, then it implies forgetting. This is an unpalatable but valid definition. In fact, I'd argue that this is what religions and other moral instructors preach - we should forget whenever we forgive. So say, for instance, I give out my Bentley (which I have because this is in no way a hypothetical situation) to Ola who needs a car and he wrecks it after an episode of careless driving. Say he apologizes, and being the model citizen that I am, I forgive him. If truly—or at least by this definition—I forgive him, I would have no reservations handing over the key to any of my many other cars (again, not a hypothetical situation) to him. If I deny him access to my other cars, I would be effectively punishing him for his earlier behavior.
Does that mean we shouldn't punish people we claim to have forgiven? Possibly. In the Holy Bible, Jesus was asked how many times we are to forgive people for their wrongs. His response? Seventy times seven. If you choose to interpret his response figuratively, he says we should forgive people as many times as possible. But let's be conservative and put a cap on it by doing the math. 490 times is what it simplifies to. Crazy? Well, it gets worse.
In algorithmic thinking, there's a prevalent idea that the quality of a solution should be measured by its performance in the worst-case scenario. That's great because worst-case scenarios are feasible and you don't want underperformance when they arise. Having to forgive someone 490 times is not the worst-case scenario— having to forgive them 490 times for the same offense is! That's more insane than the first season of Invincible, but that's what forgiving and forgetting mean.
Furthermore, Jesus said rather than live by the an-eye-for-an-eye philosophy, we should instead turn our left cheek when we are slapped on our right cheek. In other words, we shouldn't deny people the opportunity to make the same mistake or wrong us in the same manner. Difficult much? Yes, I know. Note that I have used references from the Bible because it is a book I am somewhat familiar with. However, I am modestly sure that other holy books preach words along those lines.
We should forget whenever we forgive. Tough as it may be to accept, it is an argument I struggle to invalidate. Why would I want to invalidate it? For one, it encourages repeat offenders. Who is to say Ola won't carelessly wreck my many other non-hypothetical cars? Indeed, like many other ideals, forgiving (and forgetting) seems too high a bar for one to reach. Forgiving, in itself, can be unbearably difficult. Necessitating forgetting would simply be overkill.
There you have it, Bolu. I'm not exactly sure if forgetting should be implicitly defined in forgiving or if we have the luxury to choose what to forget when we forgive. If we subscribe to the former, then we have likely been practising forgiveness wrongly. If, however, we say the latter holds, then we can go on normally about our daily lives.
Fin.
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Write you soon, merci !
- Wolemercy
Egusi is, arguably, the best soup to come out of Nigeria
P-Square and 2Face were, and perhaps, still are famous music acts in Nigeria
HIMYM is the shorthand for an American Sitcom titled How I Met Your Mother that ran from 2005 to 2014
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