Why Forgiveness Is More About You Than Them – Gita on Inner Peace
Riya Kumari | Jun 26, 2025, 23:42 IST
( Image credit : Times Life Bureau, Timeslife )
According to the Gita, clinging to anger is like “drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Which is dramatic. And true. Ever noticed how they move on with their life—posting sunsets and selfies—while you’re stuck reliving their betrayal like it’s your emotional Netflix? The Gita is big on detachment—not in the ghosting-your-therapist way—but in the don’t-be-chained-to-pain way.
There’s a quiet kind of suffering that doesn’t scream. It doesn’t throw plates or write angry letters. It simply lives inside you — disguised as silence, resentment, tension in your jaw, sleepless nights. We call it holding a grudge, but really, it’s holding on — to pain, to betrayal, to the version of the past where you should’ve been treated better. The Gita, one of the most profound spiritual texts to come out of human thought, doesn’t romanticize forgiveness. It doesn’t paint it as noble or self-sacrificing. It simply presents it as necessary — not for the one who hurt you, but for the one who was hurt. You. So let’s talk about it. Not from a place of lofty ideals, but from a place of real, lived emotion — where healing actually begins.
Forgiveness is not a gift to them. It is closure for yourself
When someone hurts you — deeply, unfairly, maybe even repeatedly — the instinct is to hold on. To replay, revisit, rehearse what they did, as if enough remembering could eventually rewrite it. But all that remembering does is bind you to the very thing you wish had never happened.
The Gita teaches detachment — not indifference, but the wisdom to know when something no longer belongs to you. Their choices were theirs. The pain it caused became yours. But your healing? That’s your power. You reclaim it by releasing the wound from your grip — not because they deserve peace, but because you do.
What they did is their karma. What you do with it is yours
It’s tempting to wait. For closure. For an apology. For them to understand what they did. But waiting keeps you stuck in a timeline that’s not moving forward. Karma, as the Gita describes it, is not revenge. It’s response. It’s alignment. And it’s none of your business what the universe owes someone else.
Your job is not to punish them. Your job is to not become like them in the process. Forgiveness, then, isn’t weakness. It’s the refusal to be defined by someone else’s mistake.
You’re not healing to let them off the hook. You’re healing so you can walk free
Let’s be clear — forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean letting them back in. It doesn’t mean rewriting history to make it more bearable. It means finally accepting that it happened — and choosing not to let it keep happening in your mind every day.
You forgive when you realize holding on is costing you more than letting go ever will. And sometimes, you forgive quietly. Not because you’ve made peace with what they did, but because you’ve finally made peace with not needing anything from them anymore.
Peace doesn’t come when life is perfect. It comes when you stop bleeding from old battles
You can’t control what others did. But you can choose whether you carry it into every room you enter. Into your next relationship. Into your future. Into your own sense of worth. The Gita offers a simple, powerful truth: you are not what happened to you.
You are what you choose to become in the aftermath of it. And when you forgive — truly forgive — you’re not erasing the pain. You’re just refusing to let it speak for you anymore.
Final Thought: You don’t owe them forgiveness. But you owe yourself freedom
This is not about being the bigger person. It’s about no longer being the broken one. It's about standing at the edge of your healing and realizing — no one else is coming to save you from this memory. It’s yours to bury. Or to plant into something new. The Gita doesn’t ask you to be superhuman. It simply reminds you that peace is available the moment you stop asking pain to explain itself. So maybe forgiveness isn’t the end of the story. Maybe it’s the beginning — of you, choosing yourself, fully and without apology.
“One who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.” – Bhagavad Gita 2.15
Forgive. Not because they earned it. But because you are ready to live without carrying them anymore. And that… is liberation.
Forgiveness is not a gift to them. It is closure for yourself
Gone
( Image credit : Pexels )
When someone hurts you — deeply, unfairly, maybe even repeatedly — the instinct is to hold on. To replay, revisit, rehearse what they did, as if enough remembering could eventually rewrite it. But all that remembering does is bind you to the very thing you wish had never happened.
The Gita teaches detachment — not indifference, but the wisdom to know when something no longer belongs to you. Their choices were theirs. The pain it caused became yours. But your healing? That’s your power. You reclaim it by releasing the wound from your grip — not because they deserve peace, but because you do.
What they did is their karma. What you do with it is yours
Stairs
( Image credit : Pexels )
It’s tempting to wait. For closure. For an apology. For them to understand what they did. But waiting keeps you stuck in a timeline that’s not moving forward. Karma, as the Gita describes it, is not revenge. It’s response. It’s alignment. And it’s none of your business what the universe owes someone else.
Your job is not to punish them. Your job is to not become like them in the process. Forgiveness, then, isn’t weakness. It’s the refusal to be defined by someone else’s mistake.
You’re not healing to let them off the hook. You’re healing so you can walk free
Forward
( Image credit : Pexels )
Let’s be clear — forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean letting them back in. It doesn’t mean rewriting history to make it more bearable. It means finally accepting that it happened — and choosing not to let it keep happening in your mind every day.
You forgive when you realize holding on is costing you more than letting go ever will. And sometimes, you forgive quietly. Not because you’ve made peace with what they did, but because you’ve finally made peace with not needing anything from them anymore.
Peace doesn’t come when life is perfect. It comes when you stop bleeding from old battles
Still
( Image credit : Pexels )
You can’t control what others did. But you can choose whether you carry it into every room you enter. Into your next relationship. Into your future. Into your own sense of worth. The Gita offers a simple, powerful truth: you are not what happened to you.
You are what you choose to become in the aftermath of it. And when you forgive — truly forgive — you’re not erasing the pain. You’re just refusing to let it speak for you anymore.
Final Thought: You don’t owe them forgiveness. But you owe yourself freedom
“One who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.” – Bhagavad Gita 2.15
Forgive. Not because they earned it. But because you are ready to live without carrying them anymore. And that… is liberation.