Love is Forgiveness

Someone told me about a story of a newly-wed couple in some far and remote country-side place. After the wedding, the husband had to leave home for a month to work in the city and he had to travel using a long boat ride to reach his place of work. The wife was left alone. After a week or two, the wife started to miss her husband badly and she felt the need to go to cross the river to see him. She doesn’t have any money to pay for the boat ride but regardless, she went to find out if she can get a ride.  She approached the first man with the boat and pleaded to give her a ride and she will pay him later when she comes back after she’d seen her husband. She would surely have some money by then. But the man refused.  She never stopped because the need to see her husband is the most important thing in the world for her now and she would do anything.  She found the second man with a boat who said yes to her but on an indecent condition. She agreed to his condition and off she went to cross the river. Her husband was surprised seeing her and knowing that she has no money to cross the river, he asked her. She told her husband how she got the ride. The husband had gotten really angry and beaten her. He left her after and never came back home.  

Now, the question is: Who’s got the worst character in this little story?

My answer was the unforgiving, unloving husband.

Another answered that it’s the wife because what she did broke everything apart. And we were told that this is the right answer.

Let me tell you why I picked the husband.

There are four characters in the story. The husband, the wife, the first man who’s got the boat and the second man.

The equation here is [ BOY + GIRL = LOVE ] [ LOVE = MARRIAGE ] [ MARRIAGE = HUSBAND + WIFE ]. There was love, therefore there was marriage.

The first man with the boat is the Businessman. You want a ride, pay me the money. It all goes down to business.

The second man with the boat is the Devil. You can get this IF you will give me this. You need to return the favor.. but actually – it is advancing him the favor.

The wife is the typical woman who loves her man. She is weak. She is willing to make sacrifices. All to suffice the need of love. She would trade anything in this world to be with her man.  There’s a lot of her in us. The rich girl who turned her back to a huge inheritance because she loved a farmer. The woman who sacrificed a high-profile career to be a plain housewife. The wife who would not sleep to earn money because her husband has cancer.  Our gender would do anything, struggle through anything – for that four-letter word: LOVE. Who can blame us?

The husband is unforgiving and unloving. The act of his wife is not out of unfaithfulness, nor out of money. It is an act driven by love. The end purpose is love. The end purpose is him. But since he is ruled by ego and pride, he beat his ‘weak’ wife and left her.

You will not leave someone, especially your spouse, for committing a mistake or for doing something out of the way to serve a higher purpose that is Love. None of us has a pure soul. Therefore, we should be able to forgive. And we can only do that when LOVE resides in our HEARTS.



P.S. I really disagree that it is the wife.