This is something I struggle with, and at times, I’m not even sure I know what it means. I believe quite a number of people feel this way too, forgiveness is a subject matter that we keep talking about but permit me to say, we never fully comprehend.
Some people say to forgive is to forget. Richard Pettinger in The meaning of forgiveness (read it here) says “to be sincere in our forgiveness of others we should not even remember the incident. Sometimes forgiveness can be conditional, we shall tell somebody we have forgiven them, but maybe later we will bring it up to use it against them. This is not real forgiveness. Only when we do not think about the experience have we really forgiven others". I kind of disagree with this school of thought. To me, you have forgiven someone when you no longer feel angry and you don’t resent the person that offended you. When you can truly think of the person without feeling any need to revenge and wish him/her well.
