Forgiveness

Forgiveness 宽恕

In a Faye Wong song, there's a line written by Linxi, 爱比恨更难宽恕. That's from the song 《宽恕》, the title song of Mainland Chinese wuxia serial 《天龙八部》. In English, it is best put forward by JK Rowling in her Harry Potter series, the character Hermione once said in Dumbledore's words "people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right ".

We treat different people differently. To people we treasure more, we often treat them more harshly because we have placed a higher expectation on them. I give an example, a friend of mine once said during a sharing session that she's very harsh towards her own siblings compared to her tuition charges even though she teaches them the same things. I am also the same. I often tell my sister that she's stupid only because I expect her to be clever and not because she's really stupid.

In forgiving other people, there's always a need to swallow a little bit of pride. In the circumstance of Harry Potter, Percy finds it hard to forgive his parents becuase they were correct. If he forgives his parents it meant that he'd have to admit to them straight in the face that he was wrong. He can't bring himself to swallow that pride to do it. Say on the other hand, if his parents were wrong that would have meant that he was correct and forgiveness comes very naturally to him as it would be his parents having to admit they are wrong. Maybe together with this statement, we can conclude that humans tend not to like to admit their mistakes.

Hence it takes great honour if one were to be able to face the mistakes and admit it.

I am a proud person, incapable of doing something as honorable as this, so when I heard today from a friend regarding what he did, I was in awe. I really respect him despite what he has done, and this sort of encouraged me not to do what I'd have succumbed into doing. 可能一个人生活也可以是一种享受, 可能只要我自己对得起我的感觉什么就足够了, or 或者我太依赖别人而忘了我也有自我. I realised I make a pretty good listener because I can give good and relevant andecodes of what others have done, or what I've gone through. Looking back at my past, I was indeed pretty screwed up. I'm so glad I'm no longer that screwed up girl I once was. And I'm also very glad that I've matured so much.

A lot of people are also proud people. Thinking through, I think I finally can understand why my relationship with a friend is now dead, because of pride, and because he can't forgive me for me being correct. A little part in me sometimes still think that if I were wrong then maybe things might be different.

Then again, the love hate components also complicates a simple thing such as forgiveness. In 《天龙八部》, all the women were unable to forgive Duan Yu's father because they all love him so much. Also Qiao Feng was also unable to forgive himself because of all the love he had in him. As we see later towards the end, Qiao Feng was able to forgive his biggest enemy but still unable to totally forgive his father.

It's easy to forgive any Tom Dick or Harry, but to forgive someone whom you've placed high expectations upon is very difficult. Because you love a person, you want that person to be perfect in your eyes, and you cannot accept any blemish of him/her, and when there's a blemish, you'd get overly upset over it. That is love.

Of course, don't try debate with me what love is. Or if love is supposed to be magnanimous and covering every base, the love in question here is the selfish love. Not just between a man and a woman, as from Qiao Feng's example, it can also be between close kins.

I was talking to another friend today, about a very close kin of hers. They're having a sort of major problem here, and it is a major problem only because of the love that bound them together. It is more difficult to forgive someone you once so respected and admired, and this difficulty would be translated to probably disgust and even hate as time pass and nothing is done to salvage the situation. I'm not saying that the friend should be all forgiving as 容忍 can lead to 纵容, which would just make matters worse.

I got upset with a friend recently. And this sort of little falling out was because of mainly the two things I've brought up today. One is that my expectation was too highly place, leading to the friend being unable to reach the too-high expectations I've placed. Another is that I was at fault. And I'm still not willing to stand up and confess that the whole thing was plotted by me and myself. yea... Sometimes I really hate myself for being so stupid, and leaving no room for me to manoevre.

爱比恨更难宽恕