Forgiveness: Why it’s Hard to Do
Forgiveness is something that people can struggle with for years, decades or even a lifetime. Recent posts have included looking at factors that can affect how hard we find it to forgive – for example, whether the harm was serious and lasting or whether the person is someone with whom we continue to interact.
Psychologically, perhaps what makes forgiveness so hard is that if we have something to forgive, then someone’s gotten the better of us. If someone has in fact managed to hurt or wrong us, then the other guy’s “won.” And the more certain we are in our judgment that this individual should have known better or in fact did know exactly what he or she was doing, then the more we experience the matter as a full frontal assault with victory by their ego over ours.
We feel like striking back – and at least as hard. There’s nothing like serious one-upmanship to fuel our own ego reactions.
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Thought for Today . . .
Few of us possess an encyclopedic knowledge of anything; yet each of us may have a Wikipedic knowledge of everything!
Psychologically, perhaps what makes forgiveness so hard is that if we have something to forgive, then someone’s gotten the better of us. If someone has in fact managed to hurt or wrong us, then the other guy’s “won.” And the more certain we are in our judgment that this individual should have known better or in fact did know exactly what he or she was doing, then the more we experience the matter as a full frontal assault with victory by their ego over ours.
We feel like striking back – and at least as hard. There’s nothing like serious one-upmanship to fuel our own ego reactions.
___________
Thought for Today . . .
Few of us possess an encyclopedic knowledge of anything; yet each of us may have a Wikipedic knowledge of everything!
Posted by Paul at 1:47 AM Permalink
14 Comments:
and the habit of never to let go :)
cool one at the end :)
cause at that time accepting that they would do such thing is is difficult n then the whole forgiving phase!!
nice post! i do agree in general!:)
Thanks for noting the extreme and even excessive wisdom of my parting thought…
LIARA: There are all kinds of valuable approaches to challenging and changing our thoughts and feelings - that's what I plan to post on next. I can see how the specific line of thought that you mention would work well for some people in some situations.
Your statement that "we each live the life that results from how we think" is false if taken literally, but when taken as a hyperbolic way of stating that our thoughts have a large impact on many aspects of our lives, it's certainly true.
MY THOUGHTS: It seems that way to me too – that the element of betrayal by someone close to us makes forgiveness especially tough. Maybe this fits in with the post in the sense that we’re especially likely to feel that someone close to us knows or ought to know just what affect they’re having on us.
REDHOGDIARY: Yes – I think your comment goes along with Vishesh's comment and my reply.
For example, if you say aloud that all is well and you're secretly dying, or your business has great financial setbacks, or your friends are betraying you and figuratively stabbing you in the back, you may consciously wonder if you aren't lying to yourself. At the same time, to choose to find something positive in every situation is to reveal you begin to undertand forgiveness.
You can sense that you are already healed and awaken one day to discover your new reality. You can love and forgive the people who don't know any other way but betrayal and help to heal them too without their awareness.
From what you say here, it sounds like maybe the idea that literally any problem that any person ever experiences is a result of the person’s state of mind would be based upon holding certain beliefs involving energy vibrations that are less widely shared.
We breeze through life on assumptions that there are things we already know - it provides a short hand for understanding the world, every single decision doesn't need to be made fresh, because you think there is an agreed on foundation. When you learn that the foundation simply isn't there, you need to think through every single decision that you made that was based on that (missing) foundation.
No wonder it takes time, there is a tremendous amount of work to do, rebuilding what we "know" and "believe" - reinterpreting our lives and stories in the light of this new evidence.
Quite literally, this person you thought you knew is different, with different qualities than you thought they had. You based your thinking on illusion....
MARY D: thanks, and for stopping by -
HAYDEN: Goes to show how complex things get not only with forgiveness, but just trying to discuss human emotions generally - which are often and I think usually a mix of more than one emotional response.
Here, where you’re talking about confusion and I think probably sadness in response to a betrayal, I agree – they’re not what I’d call ego reactions. (Some would. It depends, of course, on what you mean by "ego.")
Betrayals can also bring out intense anger, even hatred and the desire for revenge. Here I’d see the reaction as egoistic.
I’d imagine that most or all experiences of betrayal involve all three – confusion, sadness and anger – and that which predominate would depend on the nature and history of the prior relationship as well as the characteristics of the individuals involved.
Corporations would lead us to believe the prior, considering all of the pharmaceuticals aimed at changing emotional behavior.
“Love does not take offense.” (I Cors. 13)
SAGE, thanks. And for the human race to cut back on doing harm would help too!
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