Revenge vs Forgiveness

My rant about revenge yesterday got me thinking. Would I rather kill the Grinch for stealing the Christmas or will I forgive him? As always, I don’t know. I consider myself as a man of second chances. I would love to give people second chances, hell, I got lot of second chances, or else I would writing this Blog in a dingy cell with blood of cockroaches in some prison in India.

Is forgiving or forgetting viable options? If they are so viable and implementable why aren’t we forgiving each others and forgetting about the rapes and tortures? Would Iraqis forgive Americans for the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Would USA forgive Osama Bin Laden for 911? Would Indians forgive Pakistanis for all the wonderful and colorful bomb blasts? Would Kashmiris forgive the Indian army for all the torture and rape? Wouldn’t we live Utopia if that happens? If it is so realizable why am’nt I giving my address as Utopia?

My roommate asked me a question the other day, why do we study history? “Simple”, I said “to learn not to step on the same shit again”. Exactly, so ‘forgetting’ is not an option. Once bitten twice shy. Seriously, did we learn anything from history? Not that I know of. No wait, I know one thing we learned as civilization, that using humans as fuel for furnaces is not such a good idea, but bombing them from 10,000 feet above is still game.

Back to the issue, so why aren’t we forgiving each other and carrying on as nothing happened? If hindus could have forgiven Muslims or burning 58 Hindus including small children for just being Hindus, the worst riots in history of India wouldn’t have happened.

But why is it really hard to forgive? Personally I find its really hard to forgive, and I don’t know the reason, being a staunch evolutionist I think we humans evolved by believing strongly in paying back in the same token rather than having beer with the plunderer of your village. So, stretching the logic now, will forgiveness be seen as a chink in my armor? Would I be called a ‘Girlie man’ by the Terminator?

Did the jury come to a verdict? No sir, still the verdict is hung on whether to forgive or not. Apparently we haven’t been forgiving each other much , and it has been the working philosophy of human kind since we crawled out of our caves for better or for worse. So, should I forgive and get on with my life or whatever I have left of it? Yes, by all means sir, it is your choice. Choice is easy isn’t it? You may ask, I would say, you haven’t had a sandwich at the Subway.