Forgiveness as a key to a healthy life

Being healthy nowadays is a kind of a fashion, and it shouldn't be like that: health makes life much more pleasant and productive. It should be one of our first priorities.

Let’s understand that health is not restricted to the body though; it also implies a life with no diseases in mind, relationships and even finances. After all, we have experienced how much a lack of money at a moment of need affects the will to live.

So, being healthy cannot be guaranteed by going to gym or having a special diet. You do need more things to add and among them the cultivation of positive emotions.

Emotions can make us live life in a cheerful mood, enjoying every moment, or cursing everything that happens around, affecting our health in a way not even a virus could do.

Among positive emotions, there are those that generated a relief and help with healing. Forgiveness, although it is not strictly an emotion, creates that healing feeling too.

Forgiving someone or a situation changes you and it helps you to get some closure, speeding up your own moving on. But although it is so gratifying, it is not often used.

I feel the difficulty with forgiveness comes from several wrong perspectives.

• The victim forgives the attacker. That means, by forgiving I admit I was defeated. This first assumption comes from the idea of victory as the one smashing the other and because we live in a society where wars are not at all desirable, that idea is conflicting with our reality. In the day-to-day life, there are no real battles. There are some conflicts and problems, things that help us to refine our character, and forgiveness strengthen that part of our personality that is able to make us to move on, no matter what happens.
• Only the weak ones have to forgive, the strong ones win. So, forgiveness is even more attached to the concept of defeat. In fact, it is all the opposite. Anyone who has seen somebody forgiving another person is able to discern who is the strongest and, really, it is always on the side of the forgiver.
• By forgiving, I will forget the problems and they won't be solved. Forgiveness is often linked to the idea of a sort of amnesia. If something really bad happened, forgiveness helps you to heal your emotions and mind, but you would probably still need to see aspects of justice that is usually required. In fact, forgiveness will let you have a clear mind and a light conscience to rebuild your life.

By forgiving, you are clearing your own path and open yourself for new experiences, a better life and more opportunities.