A priest once shared a story during a sermon that has stayed with me ever since. It was simple, almost quiet in its telling, but it carried a weight that lingered long after I left the church.

An elderly monk, sensing that his life was drawing to a close, prayed for something unusual. He asked God to reveal the sins he had forgotten — the ones that had slipped from memory but perhaps not from the moral ledger of his life.

One evening he went to a well to draw water. The lifting mechanism there was complicated, built around something like a bicycle wheel with spokes. As the wheel turned, one spoke suddenly snapped loose and flew straight toward the monk’s face, stopping just a millimeter from his eye.

In that instant, a memory returned.

As a child, the monk had once played with a kitten. Or rather, what he had called “playing.” He had poked a spoke near the kitten’s eye, just to frighten it. He had not injured the animal, at least not physically. It was childish mischief, nothing serious — or so he had believed. Over the years he forgot it entirely.

But at that moment he understood: it had been cruelty. Even if the harm seemed small, even if it had happened long ago.

When I walked out of the church that day, I couldn’t shake the story. The monk had not meant to cause real damage. The kitten survived. Nothing dramatic happened. And yet the act had contained something harsh — a willingness to frighten a vulnerable creature for amusement.

And he forgot about it.

That, perhaps, is the most unsettling part.

We do something similar with people all the time. We make a joke. We tease. We stage a little prank. We say something sharp without thinking. Often we mean no real harm; sometimes we even assume the other person will laugh along.

But words can wound. Not the body, but the soul — that quiet inner space where humiliation, fear, or sadness can linger far longer than we imagine.

And then we forget.

There’s an old aphorism that says: “To everyone I have offended, I forgive you.” It’s meant to be funny. But if you think about it, the joke hides something uncomfortable. The people we hurt most easily are often the ones whose pain we never notice — or remember.

We move on with our lives while someone else carries the echo of what we said.

That realization makes me think how careful we should be with one another. How important it is not to leave a conversation without at least wondering what mark we may have left on another person’s heart.

Living without hurting anyone may be impossible. But living without caring is far worse.

Perhaps the only real safeguard is learning love — not the sentimental kind, but the deliberate choice to treat others with tenderness and respect. Many religious traditions say that such love must be learned, asked for, practiced daily.

The monk prayed to remember his forgotten sins so that he could repent.

I sometimes think that is a brave prayer. To ask for the truth about ourselves — even the small, forgotten cruelties — requires humility.

Yet perhaps remembering is the first step toward becoming gentler people.

Because the worst harm we do is not always the harm we intend.

Sometimes it is simply the harm we forget.