The Science Behind Mercy: To Not Forgive, is to Become

What do you beg for when no one can hear you? What do you beg for when you think God can?

Heer Ranjha by Giriraj Sharma— a painting adaptation of the tragic folktale by Waris Shah. The story tells a tale of a couple whose forbidden love surrounds the concept of mercy only being shown to one another through suffering together. 

I recently ended a one-month 'Situationship' with a younger guy on the premise that he had fallen ‘too hard’ for me and could not bear the thought of me leaving for exchange in 2 months, in spite of knowing this information beforehand. I recall vividly the way his body language and tone pointed towards an impulsive, indecisive and ignorant stance— none of it made sense to me in the moment. A gentle greeting kiss, his hand tightening around mine, a playful tackle here and there, and then an abrupt, “I don’t want this anymore”, all came strikingly sharp at the same time.

Don’t misunderstand me, I really don’t blame him, nor am I insinuating he had led me on. If I was nineteen again and convinced that my charm lay in fumbling romantic pursuits who cared for me i.e. “Baddies”, as his new Hinge profile very victoriously states— I would be at a loss for what to do as well.

On Forgiveness in Past Flames

The aftermath of this experience was a resounding clap of moral thunder that haunted me for days after (granted it’s really only been 6, AND HE’S ALREADY TALKING TO OTHER PEOPLE). The cost of emotional intelligence is cruelly ironic— you move on faster, but not without the ache of understanding too much. I knew he didn’t do this maliciously, I knew he was lost, and I also knew that I wanted to help him, but that decision was made for me.

It got me thinking; how does one take such an emotionally flaccid situation and turn it into a lesson on forgiveness? Truthfully, it seemed impossible, until I realised that we are all merely products of our environment. What that means is that if I, as a person, am surrounded by hollow heads and bodies, then I am statistically more likely to follow suit in action. I too, will become hollow. I too, will remorsefully revisit the grave of what I had tried so hard to replicate and left unchecked, I would inherit the same apathy: repeating weekends of drunken escapism, shallow affection, and the refusal to feel deeply.

To engage in the understanding of this idea, empathy is required. Empathy really only comes about when you’ve been taught how to apply it. This means to say, I will unfortunately understand every person who comes my way, only to have them occasionally disappoint me by revealing that they were never taught the significance of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Shoutout to my Catholic schooling, really drilled that one into me.

Now, I had vowed to not write any more articles on the discrepancies of a failed relationship, particularly because my ever so lovely ex-boyfriend had gotten more than his 10 minutes of being remembered by me in them. He must think he’s my muse, and so I must write on about someone else. Men come and go; heartbreak remains a rite of passage.

Meeting this boy felt like a breath of fresh air. He was funny, ever so sweet, genuine in intention and he knew how to make me smile— for the 4 weeks we had together anyway.

Yet, he had explicitly set up expectations for the future of our potential relationship that I never wanted to follow for the sake of protecting myself, only to tell me it was okay to fall and then take a dramatic step aside as I cracked my skull open. As I lie here, my almost-fully developed Cerebrum splat out on the ground, I can’t help but wonder; would I ever forgive someone who had done this to a friend of mine?

The candid answer is no. Although I am emotionally mature enough to understand that this happens in life sometimes, I am a defensive person and I would hate to see an immature and displaced individual drag one of my friends into believing she was not good enough to keep, even if that was never their intention. Simultaneously, I am trying to let go of the situation enough such that I can appreciate the nuance of it all— you never meant to hurt me and yet I cannot fathom the concept of forgiving you.

The Science Behind it all

Forgiveness, as a theory, often seems far-fetched enough to be a passing thought. That is to say, we refuse to feel forgiveness until we, ourselves are compromised somehow. For example, everyone has a friend who took back an ex they shouldn’t have— what do all of these friends have in common? They think their lives will take a terrible downhill spiral should they lose their person forever. The mere thought of having to confront that much pain in loss supersedes any kind of reasonable rationalisation of the situation. We are a species capable of saying arrogantly, “I would have never done that”, until we actually do.

This brings about a question I have not yet answered— how do we learn to forgive a person we were once so intimate with? A sheepish inquiry, yes, but one that we fail to answer accurately. Humans are predisposed evolutionarily to be aware that certain decisions they have made can and will incite remorse. To psychologically justify this, let’s take a deep dive into the parts of the brain that enable these feelings.

Remorse requires several integrated cognitive processes since it is such a complicated emotion. Experiencing remorse involves "Counterfactual thinking”: imagining how a different choice or action could have led to a better outcome e.g., "if only I had done X instead of Y". The Prefrontal and Orbitofrontal cortices are central to these kinds of evaluations and decision-making processes. Now, as we all know from pop culture, the Prefrontal Cortex only develops fully by the age of 25, and plays a vital role in moral reasoning, self-reflection, and regulating emotions. This decision-making segment of the brain often lags and allows for us to ‘mess up’ choices, although, these are ultimately still choices we consciously make and cannot simply pin down to a chemical imbalance.

From this I reasonably concluded: I cannot expect a person who has not fully developed into maturity to understand the implications of their decision. What I can expect, however, is a much more dumbfounding and obvious thing— for them to have some level of empathy within them.

Maybe one day, if he considers reaching out (this is the thousandth hint), I would find it within myself to afford him the grace of mercy. For now, I can only hope that remorse has kicked in, and taught him the lessons I wished I could.

On Forgiving a Guardian

Therein lies the exception— people older than us who have hurt us. Where do we place all of the love we once had for them? We cannot deny ourselves this gift and yet, it is indubitably the hardest demographic to find forgiveness for within ourselves. I’ve spoken to enough people to decipher this— what do we even consider forgiveness, and that too, for a parent perhaps, who has trespassed against our expectations of them? I am half of you, and yet my stomach recoils at the thought of being anything like you. I recall a quote from an obnoxiously over-reposted TikTok video to spotlight this effect: “I could mirror your actions and label it justice, but why stain myself your colours? This vice doesn’t flow in my veins.”

The last line left a lasting impression on me. Carl Jung’s Ouroboros talks about the vicious circle of eating at oneself in an attempt to remove what is inherently part of us— an unending cycle of destruction and re-creation. Protection and peace is an obligatory duty of a guardian, and sometimes we encounter situations or people who have been through a lack of this in their lives. The one common thing I’ve observed about them is an innate inability to quell their most irrational fear: never ending the cycle.

When we choose to destroy what makes us who we are, even if that part is minuscule, we discount why it was even there in the first place. I may have inherited my father’s obstinate tendencies, but I am also partly my mother’s spontaneity. These two characteristics are obsessively at odds with one another, having created a mental battlefield to endure for years. The horrifying (and actually quite manageable) reality of this, is that I am allowed to be both of those things: the cycle only then ends when I birth that balance within myself.

On Forgiving Yourself

Sometimes, we act vengefully. Other times, we make impulsive decisions that we cannot justify. More often than not, these two hypothetical scenarios are connected. I think that we are prone to egotistical tendencies that result in us justifying or explaining away the aftermath of stupidity. To explain this, it’s important to know the biases that exist which solely function to comfort us in these cases.

Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon that occurs when we behave contrastingly to how we truly feel. We justify bad decisions because of this very mental discomfort experienced when holding conflicting beliefs, values, or behaviours. Humans will then, do anything possible to solve this, as we are naturally dissonant-intolerant. This can include extreme justifications and evaluations made to create an internal consistency between said beliefs and actions.

The outcome, however, is an egregious upper-cut to our conscious. We then live, ungraciously, with an incessant need to suppress and move on from the situation— all on the basis that, “it was what had to be done.”

I think we oftentimes truly lack the ability to sit with our discomfort, and this is rich coming from me (I write articles about men who do me wrong as a coping mechanism, for God’s sake). I wonder if I let myself reflect on my own actions that could have contributed to such guilt-inducing situations enough. The remedy to this is that maybe, just maybe, I need to acknowledge my own faults by admitting my flaws.

Yes, I can be temperamental, and yes, that can drive people nuts when trying to hash out situations where accountability never seems to take a U-turn in anyone’s direction but theirs, in my opinion. The bitter truth is this; I can be wrong sometimes. This doesn’t happen very often, but when I am incorrect in action, I resort to the same dissonance that everyone does. I avoid feeling my own guilt which results in eating at nothing but myself, and the relationships I truly enjoy being a part of. I know I am guilty for enabling my own selfish behaviours at times, but this stems from a need to self-protect.

That means that if I choose to let my walls down, past the anger, all anyone would see is hurt. Am I ready for that?

Realistically, I don’t know if anyone can say they are. Some food for thought, however, is to consider whether I deem such situations worth keeping in my life. If anyone is worth fighting for, it’s me. Yet, I think we all know sometimes our counterparts are also worth fighting for.

Learning to forgive yourself for the things you knew you could have done differently means coming to terms with that pain. I didn’t mean to self-inflict this awful wound, but I know if I leave it be, it’ll get infected. Feeling that guilt is the first step, but it’s only the beginning. True healing comes when you let that pain teach you, when you allow yourself to feel it, and then choose to move forward with a little more kindness toward yourself. It’s about owning your mistakes, sitting with the malaise, and, eventually, forgiving yourself for not always having the answers. In doing so, you open the door to growth and a deeper, more honest way of being in the world— one that doesn’t rely on avoiding the truth, but embraces it, flaws and all. A refusal to indulge in this perspective brings us back to the very point of this article; we risk becoming the very things we swore to destroy.