Expository Essay (forgiveness)

Forgiveness is the act of concluding resentment, or ill feelings that came about toward a person because of a perceived offense on their part. It is an important human virtue in many ways and context, both personal and interpersonal. We witness and in most cases practice forgiveness daily.  We immediately mourn its abscess when it is not extended to us and later regret not extending it if at the time of the offence we are to hot headed to give it. In many cases it is the life blood of any relationship. It also has a way of making life meaningful, and is involved in many life lessons.  It is a way of going back on words you spoke and now regret, even forgiveness to yourself is important every day, because even you can wrong yourself sometimes.
         To me, forgiveness is the mother of all life lessons.  Without it, learning, especially about social situations would not be impossible, but substantially harder in comparison to the way things are with forgiveness.  Imagine you’re four years old, it’s your first day of preschool and you’re lined up with your peers to get a snack. You’re hungry so naturally you skip to the head of the line. You don’t know any better, but the other kids do.  But, all they do is simply push you back to the very end of the line and all you can think is that they’re being unforgivably cruel.  In this instance, all that happening is that a group of children, rather than being friendly and understanding enough to explain such a simply grace as waiting in line, they instead let you fall back and feel victimized and a little angry.  You don’t know what you did and so you continue to try and get food in the same way, nobody ever really correcting you, everyone automatically poised just to push you back. This keeps going till you are old enough to understand.  They never forgive and even when you’re in high school the second you hit the cafeteria everyone just gets ready to push you back even though you’ve done nothing wrong for years. Eventually, as said before you would learn eventually, just not as quickly or easily as you would have if someone had been forgiving enough to teach you the correct way to do things.
         Forgiving yourself is just as important as forgiving others and others forgiving you. Internal conflict need to be resolved as well, and no matter how much others may forgive you it means nothing if you can’t forgive yourself. Some people, in a world of forgiving people have this type of issue. For example, the day you win the lottery, finally, after 20 years of trying and you lose it to the wind,  You can either freak out and quit your job to cry all day, or you can freak out and eventually calm down, tell yourself you were irresponsible but forgive yourself and move on. People who have perfected self forgiveness will know soon that money isn’t everything and even if it is, being angry won’t get it for you. These are shining examples for the rest of us.
         How many times could conflicts of any magnitude be resolved with a simple apology followed by forgiveness? People say things they don’t mean when they’re angry. Without forgiveness, people would rarely be able to express when they do or don’t mean what they say because even if they did it wouldn’t matter. In a way, one fight could end a friendship forever. On a global level, this is even important.  What if Japan and America never forgave each other for World War 2? If France had forgiven Germany, even a little bit for World War 1, World War 2 may never have even occurred.
         Forgiveness, simply it is the important human virtue that allows us to have a freer society, where we can be comfortable making mistakes, and can repair friendships and alliances instantly. You can learn the ways of society, live with yourself and others.  Without it life would be less of a joy, more stressful and terribly lonely.  The statements “It’s Alright” “don’t worry about it” and “That’s ok” are underrated.