Forgiveness is a complicated business. You must have come across the following statements, I would call them excuses for non-forgiveness, at some time or the other.

How can I forgive till such time he/she renders an apology?

He/She has apologized but still did not admit his / her mistake.

He / she admitted his / her mistake but I am sure that he / she has still not truly accepted it.

He / she has accepted his / her mistake but there is no guilt at all.

He / she shows his / her guilt or remorse but continues to do it again and again.

Whoa! Not apologizing, apologizing without admission, admission without acceptance, acceptance without guilt, guilt without correction. There are just too many conditions most of us want to be satisfied before we can or will forgive the mistake of a person. It is like we are not after the mistake; we are after the person and making the person feel like a mistake.

The way out of the vicious and complicated process of forgiveness, I have described above is to forgive without an apology. Once a mistake has been committed, irrespective of what you are capable of, nothing can undo the mistake. An apology, admission, acceptance, guilt.... nothing is going to change the past. What’s happened is a thing of past. By waiting for these requirements to be fulfilled, one is only extending the bad feeling, taste and also not allowing the relationship, whatever it is, to move forward.

Most often the thing which stops us from forgiving without a condition or apology is that we think that forgiveness without an apology or some kind of indicator to our victory is equivalent to weakness. It is not. In fact it takes a very strong person to forgive and that too without making the other person to beg for it out of despair and frustration. If you are lucky the other person would have realized his / her mistake. If you are not, believe me nothing you do or say is going to change them or their point of view.

Most of us do not realize the power of forgiveness. The moment you forgive a person sincerely, you would have taken charge of your life and your own happiness. As long as you are holding it back, the control is in the other person’s hand who can liberally use it to make your life a miserable hell.

The offending act and non-forgiveness usually results in anger. Anger results in stress. Stress is a bad thing for your health both physical and mental. So when you forgive someone you are actually helping yourself out of a potentially harmful situation. The other person’s gift, if you think of forgiveness as one, is just incidental and kind of collateral.

Forgiveness allows one to move on with his/her life. As long as you keep the offending act in mind, you will only be embroiled in feelings of revenge and hate and in the process of stopping the other person to move on in his life you also will not be able to do anything much with yours.

Do yourself a favor and forgive people without them having to ask for forgiveness.