November 24

Never Forget a Good Act

There’s a beautiful saying in the Thirukkural: “We should never forget a good act that has been done to us.” At the same time, it talks about the act that we should forget. That is the one that is not so good, the one that might have hurt us. We should forget it immediately. We shouldn’t even remember it for the next hour. Then we will not have anybody as an enemy. Why do we call someone an enemy? Because we remember the harm that might have been done to us. If we forget it, there won’t be any enemy, is it not so?

Enemies are created by our remembering what harm has been done to us. We create our enemies by remembering their misdeeds. If we have forgotten that, and if we remember all of the good deeds, even if somebody wants to be our enemy, he or she cannot because we see that person as our friend.

No one is one hundred percent good or one hundred percent bad. People do many good things. Maybe once in a while, because of their lower nature, they might do something bad also. But if we are going to always remember the bad things, we will keep them as our enemies, which is not good. Instead, remember the nice things that they have done; then they will always be our friends.