Whiles having my national service at the Dean’s office, a student came to register for his courses and with a minute of a technical hitch, he flipped and went on a verbal attack on all the staff at the office.
The practice at the time was for all students to drop their registration forms and return for it after it was signed by the Dean. I kept his form and told him I was going to report his disrespectful attitude to the Dean. He left in anger and came back to apologize. I refused his apology even after my colleagues had intervened on his behalf. I told him to come back and meet the dean for his form.
When he finally came to meet the Dean, the dean asked him to apologize to me and the other staff members. He went on to tell him the consequences of abusing his staff. The young man got scared and apologized by going down on his knees and in tears. He got his form and left. You would think I should have felt better but no, I did not feel any better and felt I should have forgiven him the first time he came to apologize. Now I was looking for an opportunity to meet him again and maybe iron things out.
A month later, my friend and I took a taxi to campus and the security got him arrested for taking an unapproved road and charging him three times the amount he had charged us. We couldn’t leave the driver to his fate because I had asked him to take that route. Here we were with a driver in tears that he could not afford that charge, so it was on us to pay that amount which was half our monthly stipend for our national service. We followed the security officer to beg after all we were staff on campus too and we were hoping the man will temper justice with mercy.
The man will not badge and said he was going to report us to his boss, right outside the office the young man I had refused his apology passed by with his headphones on and singing happily! I kid you not that, this was a mere coincident, but it put me in the realization that, this security man was in this to the very last authority. and just like that, my mind instantly went to how I refused this young man’s apology! Luckily, the school registrar was at the security post, and we asked him to help us beg the security man. The security man did what I did by ignoring the registrar’s plea and going ahead to take us to his angry boss who scolded us just like what happened to the student.
The universe returns what you give it. As humans, we are bound to offend others either on purpose or on hindsight and when we refuse to forgive others, we may not find same when we offend others. I believe this was nature’s way of asking me to learn the spirit of forgiveness.
Here are some of the reasons why we should put in an extra effort to forgive those who offend us, those who offend us and refuse to apologize and others irrespective of what they did to us:
- This is more for you than for the one that offended you. When you forgive, you let go of a burden and you set yourself free to move on.
- We lose nothing by forgiving those who offend us and over the years, I have grown to know that forgiveness takes nothing away from us. If anything, it rather makes us stronger.
- We however learn something new and grow in strength. By forgiving, you learn to protect yourself and free your mind.
- You save a lot of mental energy to focus on other important things of your life.
- A lot of people will hurt you so much that, they may damage you if you are not careful. It is only wise for you to confront the situation, deal with it, and move on else you will be left with a lifetime of bitterness.
- Only you will suffer. Most of the people that will hurt you never think about what they did to you and if you don’t let it go, you will be left with pain and trauma.
- You may end up destroying your new relationships and hurting the people close to you.
Let us learn to forgive even if we don’t get the remorse and the apologies, we seek from those who offend us.