The Power of Forgiveness
So before moving on to my topic for today, I have two basic questions for all of you and I want you to raise your hands if you have done this in life. My first question is that, how many of you has said sorry in life? Please raise your hands.
Please clap for yourself. Round of applause. Please clap for yourself. Excellent. I told you to clap for yourself because it takes a very strong person to say sorry.
Now, for my next question, I don't want you to raise your hands, just think. How many of you has forgiven a person even though that person hasn't asked you sorry? Just think. Just think.
Today, before you leave Coditia Hall, I am sure that I will create a spark within you which will make you think that, "I will. I will try to forgive." Yes, my topic for today is forgiveness.
We all know that forgiveness is an 11-letter word. Well, Elizabeth Marks, the great writer, said that forgiveness is just a four-letter word. She said forgiveness is just a four-letter word, L-O-V-E, love.
The ve Thank you. Thank you so much. The very nature of we human beings is to get angry.
We feel resentful when someone harms us, right? Well, I would say that forgiveness is forgetting the past and starting on with a clean slate. Forgiveness is like taking out the knife out of your back which someone has poked you with, and not using that knife to harm anyone else, no matter how badly they have hurt you.
Today, I would like to emphasize on two aspects of forgiveness. Only two. One, why can't some people forgive? And two, the power of forgiveness.
So moving on to my first aspect, why can't some people forgive? I feel that there are three main reasons why people can't forgive, and my first reason is because we think we do not get an apology, right? We say, "He didn't forgive me."
I mean, we say, "He didn't apologize. She did not, she did not apologize." You know, I happened to read a small joke in WhatsApp, and the joke was like this.
If a man says sorry when he knows that it is his mistake, "Yes, I'm wrong," then he's wise. He's honest. Well, if a man says he's sorry when he knows that he's right and the opposite person is wrong, then unfortunately, he's a husband. Okay. So you know, when I read this joke, what I felt was that we always expect people to come and ask sorry to us.
My dear friends, it is our memory, not theirs. People have different versions forgiveness. People have very different versions for forgiveness.
You know, if forgiveness was dependent on the apology of a particular person, then believe me, by now, the whole world would have been burnt down. My second point is that it is because they lack the ingredient of forgiveness within them. You know, I read a story once which had a yogi who saved a scorpion from a flooding river.
A scorpion. So the yogi sees the scorpion is about to die, and he goes on to save the scorpion. As usual, the scorpion bites him. The yogi goes on again, the scorpion bites again, and this happens almost three times.
A passing-by devotee looks at the yogi and asks, "What are you doing? Why are you saving the scorpion? It is biting you.
Just leave it off." The yogi's reply was very different. You know what he said?
He said, "When this little scorpion cannot let go his character of biting me, how can I let go my character of helping him?" Thank you. The yogi was able to practice forgiveness in his life only because he contained the ingredient of forgiveness within him, and that, my friends, is love and compassion. We cannot love unless and until we forgive a person.
The third aspect why I feel that people cannot forgive is that we do not understand the difference between weakness and wickedness. If a person hurts you he or she might be weak, my friends, not wicked. How many of you doesn't have weakness here?
We all have weakness. We are not strong people. We all have weakness.
We all are capable of hurting someone. I know that very clearly. When we are so eager to receive forgiveness by someone, why are we not willing to give forgiveness to someone?
That is my question, my friends. When I tell you to forgive, you must forgive, you must forgive, you might ask me, "Then what do we do to those people who hurted a woman? What do we do to those people who harassed a girl?
What do we do to those, all those people who killed thousands of men? Should I forgive them?" When we complain to the police, is that forgiveness?
No, that is not forgiveness. We have a wrong, a misconsumption about forgiveness, actually. When you complain to the police, you're complaining about that person's particular act, not about that person.
When the police done, does something favorable to you it is like applying medicine on your wound. The wound won't disappear, my friends. Unless and until you forgive, the wound is still there.
So moving on to my second aspect of today, that is the main heading, the power of forgiveness. I believe there are three major powers you gain when you forgive someone, and the main power is that you lead a happy and healthy life. Yes, it is about you.
When you forgive someone, you are healing yourself, your mind, your body, and your soul. The second power I feel you gain is that when you forgive someone, you are coming out of their control. You stop being their victim, and I can say this because I have an experience.
I was rejected from a school-level quiz competition because I wasn't the topper of my class. To everyone who who's seated here, who has faced partiality, I just have two choices for you. This was the choices my mother gave me.
She told me, "If you want to come out of this situation, you have two choices, Ashwini. You have two choices. One, either you stay, you continue to feel hurt, anger, and feeling depressed, or you come out of the situation, stop being the victim of what they did."
And I came out of the situation. I gained my confidence back, and I want you to re-empower yourself. My third power, what I think that you gain is that when you forgive someone, you come out of the emotions of anger, depression, and sadness.
Once when I visited an orphanage, I happened to see a boy. His name was Ram. He was thirteen years old, and he was autistic.
He couldn't see. He couldn't speak well. I just understood four points, four to five points what he said, and that changed my life. When I spoke to him, he told me, "My mother abandoned me.
I was thrown to the dustbin. I do not know what mistake I did. I really did not know.
But to come out of this situation, I forgive my mother, and now I am happy." When I heard his story, my dear friends, I feel that we all are physically not well because we have brains, but we lack a heart. Ram out there, who was an autistic patient, had brains and had heart.
I can say that. I can say that with full confidence. There is a story about Sister Maria.
She was a nun from Kerala, and she was stabbed fifty times. She was stabbed fifty times by a villager because the villager mistook of what she did. He did not understand that she came to do social service, and he stabbed her.
He killed her. When Sister Maria's mother came the next day to see her daughter, she saw her daughter lying there. She saw that little girl she had cherished from a very small, young age lying there, speaking in silence with her. She saw her daughter just lying there helpless, who was stabbed fifty-one times and had various injuries all over her body.
You know what her mother did? She forgave that person, that person who killed her daughter. She said, "My son, I forgive you because I know you did it out of some intention, and it is okay."
I Ashwini John, as a youngster, as a human being, I just have a very small advice towards all of you. I know we all have been hurt in life. We all have grudges in life.
Okay. Forgive them. Just forgive them, not because they deserve your forgiveness, not because you asked for their forgiveness, but you cannot move on without forgiving a person. It shows your maturity level. Your forgiveness speaks about you not about them.
Forgiveness is your gift towards yourself from yourself. You just have to search within. Thank you so much.
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