A Wedding


and Some thoughts





R and H got married last Saturday in a small church in Surrey. The ceremony and the banquet were well-tuned by several readings from the Bible, a reading of sonnet 18 of Shakespeare, and several moving speeches.


H the groom talked about his appreciation of his new wife and about the un-conpromised happiness that their match has created. He said R has brought him plentiful of joy and has offered him unlimited care. He put the beauty of R's virtue thus in words, '... R. forgives and forgets ...'.

The entire speech was footnoted with the speaker's good sense of humor and punctuated by intervals of burst of laughter. It helped us to envision their firm mutual commitment and projected an image of a future life of felicity that they are going to work on with their original families.


The two words, 'forgiving' and 'forgetting', lingered in the air, and I started musing on the relation between these two acts.



The alliteration between 'forgiving' and 'forgetting' might have made the two words sound easy and therefore light, but somehow they are two really difficult things to achieve, especially if we are talking about wrongs and faults in terms of managing a relationship.

It is not difficult to forget and then forgive, since, supposedly, the point of argument is buried in/or erased from the pool of memory and therefore the reason for the fight ceases to be. No worries for further consequent discord.

To forgive and then to forget is more a challenge, I suppose. It requires a generous heart, mature mind, and sympathetic reasoning. One has to reason with his/her own anger and the irritation that is provoked in him/her, then to extend his/her sympathy and affection to the partner, and is able to release both parties from the confrontation in the end.

It is in this process of reasoning with one's own emotion and in the process of clarifying the problem that 'forgiving' is enabled. In forgiving, forgetting is initiated, not in the sense that one represses the unpleasant past, but in the sense that one becomes considerate and understanding. Then the mutual affection is embodied and the emotional bond is strengthened.

Perhaps there isn't anything like complete forgetting, i.e. failing to track any trace of memory. Forgiving and forgetting are on the one hand, I suppose, removing the negative emotion, but on the other, remembering the affectionate bond that ties the the couple together in the beginning.