FORGIVE AND FORGET? HOW FRIGHTFULLY CONVENIENT. 🍒

FORGIVE AND FORGET? HOW FRIGHTFULLY CONVENIENT. 🍒

There is a particular sort of person who recommends forgiveness immediately after doing something that would benefit enormously from being forgotten.

They say it gently, of course, as though offering you chamomile tea.

“You must forgive and forget.”

Must I?

How fascinating to discover that, after providing the offence, they have also appointed me Head of Disposal.

I have considered the position carefully and must decline.

Forgiveness may set us free. So does gin, and gin has the decency not to demand moral superiority in return. Forgetting, meanwhile, is not a virtue. It is bad filing.

And some documents ought to be kept, preferably dated, signed and in duplicate.

Portuguese justice has taught me that every document requires another document confirming that the first document was, indeed, a document. To the machine itself, with all due respect, which, in British English, means precisely none: fuck you.

I do not believe in revenge. Revenge requires planning, diary management and an alarming willingness to attend meetings. I have standards.

I prefer something altogether more civilised: remembering accurately, withdrawing access quietly and continuing with lunch.

There is also that tiresome expectation that one should rise above it and be the bigger person. Curious, isn’t it, how the bigger person is invariably expected to be the one somebody else tried to make smaller?

I may rise above it. The view is excellent from up there, and it becomes much easier to see whom never to invite back.

Forgiveness is personal. It does not reopen the door. It does not restore privileges. It does not transform an absent apology into an accepted one, nor does it require us to pretend that someone’s dreadful behaviour was merely “a lesson sent by the universe”.

Some things teach us.

Others simply reveal people.

Lesson learnt. Person noted.

IN CONCLUSION

I am neither God, nor do I have Alzheimer’s.

I may forgive if it buys me peace. I shall keep the receipts, wear the good watch and carry on.

But I shall not forget merely to make the guilty more comfortable. 🍒

#CantoDaCereja #ForgiveAndForget #BritishHumour #PortugueseJustice #KeepTheReceipts #PersonNoted #WithAllDueRespect #CherryOnTop 🍒