Mrs. Sivagnoli
English II
7 December 2007
FORGIVE BUT NEVER FORGET
Barry Bonds once said, “I forgive you but I will never forget.” I believe that it is better to forgive another person for what they’ve done but never forget it to protect myself. No one is perfect, so I believe I should forgive them for this imperfection. However, if that action causes me to be hurt, or causes me to be taken advantage of, then I want to remember it to avoid experiencing it a second time.
I believe that everyone is not 100% perfect. In life there are little mistakes and big mistakes. Depending on the harm done to the person, it may be hard to forgive the wrong doer. Forgiveness has to come sooner or later, if not, it will eat you up and the wrong doer will have total control over you. Forgiveness releases my pain and thoughts of the incident.
Not forgetting the incident not only protects me from it happening again in the future but gives me a lesson to learn from. For example a friend of mine stole my cell phone and I forgave him in my head but not verbally because I never could prove really if he had stolen it. From here on out, I have learned to protect my expensive belongings away from this person.
Another example of a time when I forgave someone but didn’t forget is when my friend tripped me and then tried to do it again. I was walking down the hall and a friend of mine tripped me and I stumbled and fell. I forgave him for doing it, but another day he tried it again and I dodged it because I had remembered what had happened before when I was tripped.
I believe that forgiving but not forgetting is something that all people should do. No one is perfect. Like Barry Bonds once said “I forgive you but I will never forget.”