Forgive and Forget

I'm going to begin with a quote that I stumbled across while reading a book I assigned for my English class: 

"People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, 'I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die,' a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin." 

How true this statement is. Why is forgiveness so hard? We have all been wronged in our lives. We have all had that friend, that boyfriend/girlfriend, that husband/wife, or whoever it is who has done something hurtful to us, so hurtful that we think forgiveness is not an option, let alone forgetting. 

What exactly is the meaning of the word "forgiveness?" Well, like my students would probably tell me if I asked them to look it up, "it's the act of forgiving." Ok, well, thank you for that helpful clarification, but that tells me nothing. So what is the denotation of the word "forgive?" According to the dictionary, forgive means to grant pardon or remission of; to cease to feel resentment against. The word pardon reminds me of prisoners or criminals who are granted a pardon for the crime they committed. Does this mean they are forgiven of the crime they committed? And the word "resentment." It harbors such a negative connotation. To cease to feel resentment against. I like that definition a little better than the first. But still the question remains, why is it so hard to cease to feel resentment against others? Is it because of the severity of the crime they committed against us? Is it a pride issue? In the words of TLC, "I ain't too proud to beg." But when it comes to asking forgiveness or even forgiving someone who has wronged us, many people are, in fact, too proud to beg for forgiveness and/or forgive that person who wronged them. The Bible tells us to "forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." (Collosians 3:13) I will be the first to admit, mainly because this is my blog, that it has been hard to forgive those who have hurt me in the past. In fact, there are remain a few out there whom I have to yet to forgive. Does this make me a bad person? Does this mean I never will forgive these people? No, it just means that my heart is not ready and healed in order to be in a place of forgiveness. But as far as choosing death over forgiveness, I am not quite ready to choose my coffin. 

To forget about the betrayal or the lies or the dishonesty or whatever it is, is a conscious act. One has to be consciously aware of the incident in order to be able to forget it, right? But does forgiveness require the same concerted conscious effort? Must one concentrate on the incident that requires the forgiveness, or does this act of forgiving live somewhere else? To me, forgiveness is an emotional act that is lead by the heart. The heart knows when it's time to forgive, whereas the head knows when it's time to forget. I may have "forgotten" what he or she did to me, but my heart has not given consent for forgiveness of the wrongdoing. So again I ask, does this make me a bad person since I have yet to forgive someone for what they did and said to me so many years ago? 

So I go back to the question - why is forgiveness that hard? 

And like I would tell my kids - I don't know is not an answer.