Di, of Pensitivity101, is our host for Truthful Tuesday. This week Di wants to know:

Do you forgive and forget, remember but dismiss it as unimportant, or does it depend on the circumstances?

Someone you know — maybe someone you love — has “done you wrong.” You’re upset, angry, and hurt. You’ve been betrayed. A trust has been broken. Is it even possible to forgive and forget?

I don’t think so. Not both.

Everyone make mistakes. I know I have. I’m sure you have, too. I can say that with certainty because none of us is perfect. To err is human, right? The unfortunate truth is that you can’t change the past. Once words have been spoken, they can’t be unspoken. Once deeds have been done, they can’t be undone.

Alexander Pope said that to forgive is “divine.” Depending upon the circumstances, that can be really hard. What you can do is focus on the present and strive for a better future. While it may be difficult, frustrating, and even painful, it’s for your own benefit to be forgiving.

And then there’s forgetting. Forgetting is not only pretty close to impossible without undergoing a frontal lobotomy, it’s probably not even a very wise thing to do. If you forget something that has caused you pain, how can you learn from that experience? How can you grow?

You may want to forget, but you can’t. I have accepted that people may forgive, but are unlikely to forget the pain and the hurt. But over time, that pain and hurt will diminish, and if I wish to salvage my relationship with someone who has “done me wrong,” I need to find a way to deal with it, and that means genuinely forgiving the person who hurt you.

And that’s what is so hard about “forgive and forget.” The former is hard to do; the latter is impossible to do. As Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz noted, a wise person won’t try to do both.