Learn the English Phrases FORGIVE AND FORGET and LET BYGONES BE BYGONES

- In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase, forgive and forget.

When you forgive someone, it means that

they did something you didn't like,

they apologized and then you forgive them.

Basically, if they say, I'm sorry, you say something like,

hey, it's no big deal or hey, don't worry about it.

So when you forgive someone, it means that you no longer

are annoyed with them for doing something wrong.

When you forget something it means you simply

don't remember it anymore.

So we have this phrase in English that we say to people,

it's always best to forgive and forget

or it's good to forgive and forget.

That means if someone does something to you that's annoying,

it's probably best just to forgive them

and then just forget about it,

it's not easy to do.

Sometimes it's easy to forgive but it's not easy to forget,

sometimes it's easy to forget

and then you kind of don't forgive

because you're not thinking about it anymore

but usually if you can forgive and forget,

it's the best way to go.

The second phrase I wanted to talk about is

let bygones be bygones.

This is an older phrase but it's still used in English,

you'll hear it from time to time.

If you say to someone, let bygones be bygones,

it means that if something happened to them

that they didn't like, maybe it happened a long time ago,

they should just try not to think about it

and they should just forgive the person

who did that to them.

This is a tricky one because if it's something simple like

if you stole my lunch when I was in elementary school,

one or two times, I would probably if I met you today

and we're both the same age and we're old now,

I would probably say, hey let bygones be bygones.

I'm not even worried about the fact that you used

to steal my lunch in school.

So again, if you say forgive and forget,

it means that it's probably best if you can

to forgive somebody for wrong doing

and then try to forget about it

and then when you say, let bygones be bygones,

it means that you just want to let something

that happened in the past be forgotten

and to not worry about it anymore.

Hey, let's look at a comment that we got

and this comment actually has the phrase

let bygones be bygones in it.

This comment is from Jacques Vernier and Jacques says,

"Hi Bob, I'm French and I'm addicted to your lessons.

"Thanks to you, I learned that I'd been a class clown

"in my youth.

"I used to throw pieces of chalk at the board behind

"my teacher's back."

I shouldn't be laughing at this, should I?

"But let bygones be bygones,

"it was 60 years ago."

And my response to Jacques was,

well, you must have a great memory to remember so far back.

I agree though, let bygones be bygones

as it was so long ago.

So there is a great example of how to use the phrase,

let bygones be bygones.

But I do want to talk a little bit more

about forgiveness and forgetting.

Phrases like forgive and forget can seem so simple.

Like, oh, just forgive and forget.

And I know there are small things in life

that happened where it's really easy to forgive and forget

but I'm also aware that people

can be extremely mean to each other.

And I don't want to teach a phrase

like forgive and forget or let bygones be bygones

without recognizing the fact that sometimes things happen

to us in life, sometimes people do things to us

that's just wrong and it's very, very difficult to forgive

and it's extremely difficult to forget.

So again these phrases I think you can use

when you're talking about lighter moments in life

but certainly if something has happened to you in the past,

that was very traumatic,

that means something really bad happened to you,

maybe a crime or maybe something

that just wasn't very nice for you in life

to have someone say, just forgive and forget

or let bygones be bygones can make you feel kind of sad.

So I hope nothing like that has ever happened

to you in life and if it has, I hope that you can work

your way through it in a peaceful way

where you just feel right about

how you live your life now.