Nota dari SOO EWE JIN yang dipetik dari laman web The Star
What it means to forgive
OF late, friends
have been referring to me as Bapak Jokowi. I am told I look uncannily like him,
and the match would be perfect if I wore a white shirt and rolled up my
sleeves.
I guess it is okay
to look like somebody who is generally well regarded by the people, but it
would be quite a nightmare if we were to bear resemblance to some of the most
hated people on this planet, alive or dead.
Jokowi has been
creating waves with his new approach as president of Indonesia. His simple
lifestyle, and that of his family members, is refreshing in political circles.
One recent news
item about him which piqued my curiosity was how he forgave the satay vendor
who was detained by the police for allegedly defaming him online.
Jokowi forgave
Muhammad Arsyad during a meeting with the satay vendor’s parents, Mursidah and
Syafrudin, at the State Palace last Saturday.
“I forgive him
100%. I forgave him through his parents,” Jokowi said.
According to the
report in The Jakarta Post, Jokowi also
called on the public to learn from Arsyad’s case and promote decency and
respect for others online.
Without moving into
the realm of politics, I would like to share some thoughts about what it means
to forgive, because it is something that affects all of us, whether we are
powerful and famous, or just ordinary people.
The first thing
about unforgiveness is it creates burdens that can wear us down.
It could be
something frivolous like a quarrel with your girlfriend or a nasty encounter
with a sales person. Or something more serious like a family dispute or a
business deal gone awry.
Whatever the case,
when we do not move on, we end up with a burden that gets heavier by the day.
A friend quipped
the other day that when his wife gets angry with him over something, she
becomes both “hysterical and historical”.
“Imagine, she is
mad over something and I have to listen to her go on and on over things that
happened years ago,” he said.
“I thought she had
forgiven me.”
Those of you who
follow my column know that I can be quite historical and sentimental. But the
things I choose to remember are good things – precious memories that continue
to inspire and make me live life to the fullest.
I choose not to
remember the things that are negative, or have had hurtful implications, simply
because they never lead to anything good.
In fact, even the
people who have wronged us can turn out to be our best friends eventually under
different circumstances.
But it will never
happen if we look at them as though they are frozen in that particular period
of time when we got hurt by what they said or did.
I believe that even
the most racist people in this country are capable of change if they are
touched by the right circumstances.
Imagine, for
example, if a person who regularly goes on a tirade against people who are different,
suddenly getting a new lease of life because the very people he condemned
provided the organs and the blood to save his life.
As a cancer
survivor, I know that while cancer affects many parts of our body, there is no
such thing as “heart cancer” in the medical sense.
But an unforgiving
spirit is like cancer of the heart.
If we do not know
how to let things go, if we continue to harbour hatred, we are just allowing
the heart to fester in acidic thoughts that slowly and surely eat us away –
just like cancer.