A true story which happened at a school in Ireland:

Once a teacher asked her students to bring a plastic bag and a bag of potatoes to school. As soon as the students brought these, the teacher presented them with an assignment.

Choose different potatoes to represent all the different people you haven't forgiven to your entire life due to something they had done.

The students picked out potatoes from the bag they brought, wrote the name of the person and the date on each one, and of course, put these in the plastic bag.
It should be noted that some of these bags were quite heavy.
As their teacher instructed them, the students carried this bag of potatoes everywhere they went for one full week: to school, to their afternoon classes, to the playground, to their friends and even to their bed at night.

The bother of carrying these bags everywhere all week long made the students understand the "weight" they carry with them everywhere they go and the extent of trouble they go through in order not to forget the bag in all sorts of strange and embarrassing places…

Naturally the content of the bag became mushy and smelly by the end of the week.
This metaphor brilliantly describes the price we pay for keeping our grudges, for maintaining our pains and angers pent up inside and for our negative attitude toward various situations.

Very often we think that forgiving people is a "gift" we give them, yet remember that this is more often a "gift" we give ourselves…

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