THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS

UNEDITED SAMPLE LITERARY ARTICLE
By Charmaine Moralla Kilapkilap
IV-Enrico Fermi


"Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.”

After all, as what Epictetus said, “Forgiveness is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge is a sign of a savage nature.” To which Isaac Friedmann added, “Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.”

These words came into my mind while remembering the story of “The Hussar”, by Johann Peter Hebel. It is about a young sergeant who faces a very difficult decision. When he was a boy of eight, he and his entire family were wronged by a cruel man. Now, the tables are turned and he has the same man at his mercy. This is chance to get even. But, what does he do?

Here is the powerful story that still reverberates in my mind, as well as in my heart, and leaves me the questions – what is your attitude toward revenge and forgiveness? Are you the type who would give tit for tat, or one who would forgive and forget? Do you subscribe to the biblical quotation “an eye for an eye”, or its opposite, “turn the other cheek”?

“When, at the beginning of the French Revolution, the Prussians made war against the French and rode through the province of Champagne, no one imagined that the wind would change and that before long, in the year of 1806, the French would come to Prussia and return the uninvited visit. For not every Prussian behaved as befits an honorable soldier in an enemy country.

Thus, then a Prussian hussar, who was an evil person, invaded the house of a peaceable man, took from him all his money and much else of value, and finally even his pretty bed with the brand-new bedspread, and mistreated husband and wife. Their boy, eight years old, begged him in his knees at least to give back the bed to his parents. The hussar pushed him away harshly. Their daughter ran after him, caught hold of his cape, and implored him for mercy. But he seized her and threw her into the well in the courtyard, and got away with his loot.

Years afterward, he retired, settled in the city of Neisse in Silesia, and thought little of the crime he had once committed, believing that the grass had grown over it long ago.

But what happened in the year of 1806? The French marched into Neisse, and one evening a young sergeant was quartered at the home of a good woman who attended him well. The sergeant was honorable, behaved decently, and seems cheerful.

The next morning, the sergeant did not come down to breakfast. So the woman went up to his room to see whether he was all right and softly pushed open the door.

The young man looked at her with a tearful expression and told her that the spread of the bed in which he had spent the night had belonged to his parents in Champagne; they had lost everything in the pillage fourteen years before and had become paupers, and all that was coming back to him now, and his heart was full of sorrow. For the sergeant was the son of the man who had been robbed in Champagne, and he still recognizes the spread and the red initials his mother had sewed on it.

The good woman was frightened and said that she had only bought it from a hussar who still lived in Neisse. The Frenchman got up and had himself taken to the home of the hussar, and recognized the man.

“Do you recall,” he said to the hussar, “how fourteen years ago you took away from an innocent man in Champagne all his possessions, even his bed, and took no pity when an eight-year-old boy begged for mercy? And do you still remember my sister?”

At first the old wretch tried to make excuses, saying that in wartime, as everyone knows, not all things go as they should, and what one fellow leaves, another takes, so one might as well do the taking oneself. But when he saw that the sergeant really was the boy whose parents he had plundered, and as he remembered the sister, the hussar’s voice failed in remorse and terror, and he fell on his shaking knees before the Frenchman unable to utter anything but “Forgive me.”

At this point you may think gleefully: “Now the Frenchman will hack the hussar to pieces.” But that would not tally with the truth. For when’s a man heart is stirred and almost breaking in pain, he cannot take revenge. For vengeance is too small and contemptible, and he thinks: “We are in the hands of God,” and cannot bring himself to repay evil with evil. Thus thought the Frenchman, too, and he said: “That you mistreated me, I forgive you. That you mistreated my parents and made them paupers, my parents will have to forgive you. That you my sister into the well, where she perished – may God forgive you that.” With these words he went away without doing the hussar the slightest harm, and he became well again in his heart.

But the hussar felt afterward as though he had stood before the Last Judgment and had been found wanting. He did not have one peaceful hour from that day on, and a quarter of a year later, it is said, he died.

What the young sergeant had done is not that easy to do. Although we may admire him for the courage he had shown us, putting ourselves into his situation may awaken us by the hard truth that we may as well had followed what it seemed to be the last resort – revenge. Nothing could feel better than being able to avenge the people we love so dearly and to get even with him who has wronged us. But if we will only stop and began thinking about it, we are actually wrong.

When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us. Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our days into a hellish turmoil.