Let’s relearn the art of being normal

By Al S. Mendoza

FORGET and forgive?

Or forgive and forget?

Really now, which comes first?

It’s like the chicken-and-egg thing again.

Did the egg come first, or the chicken?

It has no ending, this debate.  It’s as endless as the Pasig River, if not the Agno River.

I say this in lieu of the season.

Yesterday was Christmas day.  But the season is still on.  It ends only after the New Year has set in.

So, I recall the forgive-and-forget refrain once again.

Which really gets top billing, forgive or forget?

Many say forgive.

Seemingly right.

You can’t forget if you don’t forgive first.

How many times must you forgive the one who wronged you?

The Good Book says not once, not seven times, not 77 times but 777 times.

Meaning, you have to forgive with finality.

And how can you forgive with finality?

By forgetting the wrong that’s been done to you.

Meaning, the person who had wronged you must receive your forgiveness without any condition whatsoever.

Seemingly, Lauro Visconde hasn’t forgiven those who had wrong him arising from the massacre of his wife and two children in 1991.

His hurt hasn’t seemed to subside all this time as shown by his outrage when Webb et al. were freed by the Supreme Court.

He couldn’t forget that’s why.

If he could only forget, he could so easily forgive.

That’s why I’m inclined to believe that forgetting comes first before forgiving.

Look, I lost a thousand bucks a while back to a pickpocket.

You know what I did?

I immediately forgot about the incident.

I stopped dwelling on it.

Rub of the world.

Isn’t this world filled with trickeries?  Con artists?  Heartless jerks?

I forget I was tricked and I feel fine.

I forget I was conned and I feel fine.

I forget about a jerk suddenly putting one over me and I feel fine.

I tell myself, “I’ve got to lose sometimes.”

And I feel OK.

After I had forgotten the bad incident, I started talking to Dear God.

“Dear God,” I said. “I’ve forgiven the one who had done me wrong.  I’m sure you will forgive the person, too, in due time.”

In God’s time, everyone’s forgiven.

We’ve been wronged once, twice or thrice already.

If not, we aren’t normal.

This season, let’s relearn the art of being normal.  Again.

Let’s forget we’ve been wronged.

By doing so, the forgiving comes natural.

In the first place, isn’t Christmas about forgetting and forgiving?

Loving comes easy by accomplishing both.

Merry Christmas!

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