Forgiveness: a "How-To" Spirit, Sort of...
No How-To Manual
The preceding posts and comments suggest that forgiveness is a process and often a major struggle, but one that’s worthwhile. If we can let go of resenting someone who has wronged us, then our freedom from bitterness enhances our own quality of life and can only improve our ability to relate to others. So how do we do it?
The kind and degree of wrongdoing, whether we were close to the wrongdoer prior to the harm done, where we happen to be in our present circumstances and overall view of life – such variables assure that a “one size fits all” approach to forgiveness won’t work.
Your Practical Thoughts
What are some things you’ve told yourself that have helped you let go of resentment and bitterness? Your thoughts may be useful to someone else.
Conversely, what are some things you’ve told yourself to help hang onto bitterness and resentment? How has hanging onto it help you – or hasn’t it? If it has, can you identify how it's helped?
The preceding posts and comments suggest that forgiveness is a process and often a major struggle, but one that’s worthwhile. If we can let go of resenting someone who has wronged us, then our freedom from bitterness enhances our own quality of life and can only improve our ability to relate to others. So how do we do it?
The kind and degree of wrongdoing, whether we were close to the wrongdoer prior to the harm done, where we happen to be in our present circumstances and overall view of life – such variables assure that a “one size fits all” approach to forgiveness won’t work.
Your Practical Thoughts
What are some things you’ve told yourself that have helped you let go of resentment and bitterness? Your thoughts may be useful to someone else.
Conversely, what are some things you’ve told yourself to help hang onto bitterness and resentment? How has hanging onto it help you – or hasn’t it? If it has, can you identify how it's helped?
Posted by Paul at 10:41 PM Permalink
21 Comments:
I'm seeing the blog here lean toward a sort of classroom setting, or a study of sorts wherein you, Paul, are the moderator. As such, please forgive my brief and poignant comments as of late... I acted much the same way in school and college.
How do I respond? I try - sometimes desperately - to understand what that person is thinking, has been through, how they see the world.
My first response is that maybe I've had a gifted life and haven't been deeply wronged. But I have been. And no, I'm neither angry or bitter. I see which of my own needs blinded me to the warnings, and I see the damaging things that happened to the person in question and how he was shaped by it.
I'm sorry for him and his pain. He altered the course of my life in a way that grieves me deeply - but - it seems to me that most people in the world act from their pain. Some are so deeply twisted by their pain that they must be fenced off from others and not allowed to act freely.
I've never met anyone who was evil, although I've met people who do evil.
TIMJAMZ: Sounds like you’re referring to a situation where the 2 people remain in an ongoing relationship. It’s true that you wouldn’t want to reinforce the offending behavior under those circumstances; I'm thinking that hanging onto resentment wouldn’t necessarily be required to achieve that end.
No problem with your comments!
HAYDEN: Trying to put oneself in the wrongdoer's position to understand how that person views things – I can see how that could help, especially when we have some insight into the personality and history of the person who harmed us.
Recognizing that the doer of harm was himself harmed by his actions is an insight that would make forgiveness easier, as well as drawing a distinction between doing evil and being evil – although I can see how that second one would be a distinction some people would take issue with. (“Evil is as evil does…”)
The only times I've tried to hold on to the hurt is when I have needed to distance myself from someone and can't seem to do so ..... I think, though, this is a self-defeating strategy, in the end.
Holding onto resentment is sometimes a way of getting tribal with other people who may feel the same way or at least back you up. Its very destructive but very easy to do, a way of getting even I suppose, but feels pretty nasty in the end.
My observation, though, was that his need for power came from his powerless and loveless childhood. He used the act of damaging others, or putting them at risk, to try to make himself "something, someone." Once I distanced myself and had had sufficient time to ponder (and yes, to do some detective work) I found his situation terribly sad.
Mind you, I still think he should be locked up to protect others, and I have no particular confidence that he's "curable."
But that right there - to be damaged so badly that there is no hope - isn't that a tragic thing?
KARIO: I’ve experienced something similar and likewise, it helped me let it go to recognize that there were things I valued more highly than the sense of being right.
HAZZBUZZ: A related and extremely destructive force – that collective resentment of groups of people who dehumanize other groups of people and blame them for their problems – or else cling to guns and religion. (I couldn’t resist, even though you’re in the UK and I think unlikely to catch the reference to the latest presidential campaign antics here…)
That strikes me as another widely applicable helpful thought – that it seems doubtful that many or any people are born evil. I've qualified this a bit because in 23 years of counseling kids, I did meet three really scary ones – like they had something missing as far as qualities like empathy and genuine affection for others go.
But then even if there are people born evil, it’s not like they willed themselves into being...
CHRIS EDGAR: I can see how that would work. Even though I haven’t happened to experience it in relation to someone treating me badly, I have in relation to some other forms of adversity – looking back, you wouldn’t have changed it. Thanks for stopping by
HAYDEN: Wow, hadn’t read your comment before replying to Hazzbuzz above. Yes, it’s tragic all right – my experience was with children, three who appeared to be on their way to becoming adults who were going to do some damage.
If a person were evil, wouldn’t the evil actions be completely not-at-will? How would we expect an evil being to choose non-evil?
THIRDWATCH: I can picture what you’re talking about – an unadmitted resentment that festers until that first step of acknowledging that one has been wronged is taken. Personally speaking, I guess that historically I was easily outraged… that first step was never a problem, lol!
But I definitely hear what you’re saying. For example, this kind of dynamic might occur in a relationship where the person who’s been wronged has so much invested in maintaining the relationship that he or she doesn't want to seriously contemplate anything that could threaten it.
At 5 she was picked up in a market in Ethiopia - an orphan. She was in 3 orphanages by the time she was 7 1/2. She was adopted to this country, and abused - raped - by her adopted father. Within 10 months she and her "sister" (not related, but from the same orphanage at the same time) were pulled from that home and separated from each other.
By the time I met her, at 10, she hadn't lasted anywhere for more than 9 or 10 months before she was 'returned' to the social worker. She was with me for 3 years.
At 10 she could beat up any girl OR boy up to 2 years older than she, and she was soon given a wide berth. A teacher who saw her fight said it was terrifying - she had "no boundaries."
Eventually I was having nightmares that she would do a Columbine and my health was failing - and yes, back she went into the 'system,' to a group home.
What I had to offer wasn't nearly enough. She wasn't evil. She was definitely capable of doing evil. And she was in so much pain that she had gone numb to human feeling.
She truly had no conscience, no empathy. Every minute of every day she was ready to fight for her life, and believed that she needed to. Every thing she touched was, in her mind, a matter of life and death in a game where no one can be trusted. And by ten she already had the practiced charm of a con.
All brains create patterns of understanding very young - patterns of trust and cooperation when we're lucky.
Can you imagine the patterns of understanding that were etched into that girl's brain? Expecting the worst of the world and determined not to be victimized ever again - does that make her evil? To me, it makes her tragically flawed, and a dangerous monster. (Beauty + charm + intelligence + ruthlessness = monster.)
She is to be mourned for what might have been.
HAYDEN: Those sorts of situations reflect the contemporary priorities of government. Other people’s kids matter hardly at all as compared, say, to launching a “preemptive war” based on misinformation to realize the hidden agendas of the few, or keeping the legislative focus on passing laws that allow the superrich to keep an even higher percentage of their wealth and that further the deregulation/self “regulation” of industry so it can profiteer more richly at the expense of ordinary citizens.
One result of today’s national priorities is a large population of underserved children from terrible backgrounds who then get shuffled around in just the manner you describe, making things gradually worse for them. The programs that serve these kids feature low wage, high turnover protective services staff. Despite their best intentions and those of people like you who try to help, the kind of thing you describe is repeated time and again. Good for our thriving prison industry system I suppose, which, as I understand it, is increasingly going private/for profit – like I guess pretty much everything except our systems for collecting taxes and waging war.
Big business and the "public servants" who represent their interests in Washington have done a brilliant PR job convincing a large segment of the American public that the enemy is “Big Government” and that the major corporations are the little guy’s friend.
The consequences to us all, especially to our future, of all the things that the richest country on earth is presently NOT spending money and focusing attention on, are incalculable.
i would also like to know what that person think about their wrong behavior......
for those who do wrong things repetitively and intentionally the feeling could be indifference.....cause after smtym it i would lose my respect for that person n thn forgiveness is not the issue.......it becomes more abt getting rid of that person ........
and in last for purely selfish reason...... maybe my respect or trust or love (in some cases all three) for that person wud get thm forgiveness.......plus the peace of mind i wud get........and i m sure many would disagree but i m sure we have forgiven people so that we start feelin gud abt ourselves! the feelin that 'I' am such a good person that instead of holdin grudge i forgive..... it like a feelin of power. the whole idea of forgiving sm1 who does not deserve can make ppl feel god like!!
On the other hand, where you talk about the idea of forgiving to feel “holier than thou” or superior to others – if that’s the primary motive to forgiveness, I’d want to call it pseudo-forgiveness and would see this as falling in the category of the selfish or egocentric.
LIARA: I’ve found the same, and in general – that with few exceptions, I’ve had to consciously deal with negative emotions and thoughts when they present themselves as recurring themes.
Be well, DLS
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