Real Forgiveness

In the movie, The Interpreter, one of the characters had lost some family members to murder, and she was talking about it:

“Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can’t find anyone else. And in Africa . . . In Matobo [fictional country], the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call ‘the drowning man trial.’ There’s an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He’s taken out on the water and he’s dropped. He’s bound, so that he can’t swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they’ll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn’t always just, that very act can take away their sorrow. Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.”

We always have a choice, and love is always the greater and happier one, regardless of how justified anger and other negative choices might seem to be.