On the wisdom of forgiveness

We're all prone to mood swings and acts of folly, rage and immaturity because we're human. Being good and noble all the time is incompatible with our biology. We made mistakes yesterday and we'll make mistakes tomorrow. An eventual episode of madness or depression is forthcoming. Regret is unavoidable.

This should be sufficient to compel and allure us to consider forgiveness more often. Here's a quote I love from Alain de Botton on the wisdom of forgiveness:

"The wise are comparably realistic about other people. They recognise the extraordinary pressure everyone is under to pursue their own ambitions, defend their own interests and seek their own pleasures. It can make others appear extremely mean and purposefully evil, but this would be to overpersonalise the issue.

The wise know that most hurt is not intentional but a by-product of the constant collision of blind competing egos in a world of scarce resources. The wise are therefore slow to anger and judge. They don't leap to the worst conclusions about what is going on in the minds of others. They will be readier to overlook a hurt from a proper sense of how difficult every life is, harbouring as it does so many frustrated ambitions, disappointments and longings.

Of course they shouted, of course they were rude, of course they wanted to appear slightly more important... The wise are generous as to the reasons why people might not be nice. They feel less persecuted by aggression and meanness of others, because they have a sense of the place of hurt these feelings come from."