What does love have to do with it?  Do you really think that to forgive, we have to love the one who was brutal to us?

We have to make a very important distinction between what Aristotle calls the Essence of any construct and its Existence.  The Essence defines its purest form.  Existence is how we actually deal with this construct in the real world.  The highest or purest form of forgiving is to love those who do not love you.  This is its Essence, for which we have a possible goal.  In reality, in Existence, this is not always possible for us.  The legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers football team, Vince Lombardi, once said, “…..if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”  So, we should be aware of the Essence of forgiveness so that, even if unattainable in some cases, we can reach a higher sense of forgiveness, an excellence of forgiving such as genuine respect toward the other, that might not have been possible otherwise.
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