The challenge of forgiveness
Let me set up a hypothetical situation for you.
Someone does something really crappy to you. It doesn’t involve torture, bloodshed, or imminent danger to life or limb — but it’s not a minor annoyance, either. Think cheating, stealing, lying to or about you, that kind of thing. To make matters worse, it’s done by someone you thought you had every reason to trust. And when you say, “Hey, what the hell,” this person you trusted plays the “you made me do it” card.
What do you do? Unless you’re a saint, you get mad, and you probably stay that way for a good long while. But then what?
To some extent, this is a universal experience. It’s probably not hypothetical to you. It’s not hypothetical to me.
To add insult to injury, someone who took advantage of my trust has noticed that I made the best of the betrayal, and now points to that as proof that it wasn’t actually that bad and, in fact, might even be considered as having done me a favor.
What do I do? I’m not a saint. I got mad. I’ve stayed that way for a good long while. But now what?
Because the thing is, I’m starting to realize that my anger is no longer serving me. Oh, it did at first. It gave me the strength to stand up for myself, to put an end to the bad behavior, and to say, “Do not do that again, or else.” But now my anger is becoming counterproductive.
It doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t undo the past. It doesn’t even elicit an apology; if anything, the other person has used it as an excuse to justify a lack of regret. Worse yet, rage keeps me perpetually frozen in the painful and infuriating moment that I discovered someone I trusted was entirely untrustworthy. As long as I continue feeling it, I continue defining myself as a victim — and more than that, I continue berating myself for not having known, somehow, that I needed to protect myself. That’s corrosive, even more damaging to me in the long run than the original betrayal.
And so I find myself wrestling with the terrifying concept of forgiveness. Yes, terrifying. I know continuing to be good and mad (understandable though it might be) is, as the saying goes, “drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” But my fear is that without it, I have no way to protect myself against a repeat performance.
That’s why I wish I could erase the phrase “forgive and forget” from the language. I think it does us all a huge disservice; it implies that forgiveness equals defenselessness. Forgiving bad behavior — or to phrase it in a way I’m more comfortable with, letting go of anger about it — doesn’t mean accepting it. As a wise friend recently said to me, “You can forgive a scared dog for biting you, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it bite you again.”
If I let go of my anger, am I excusing being treated poorly, or worse yet, agreeing that it was appropriate? Does forgiveness mean I have to pretend it never happened? Does it obligate me to give the other person the chance to hurt me again in exactly the same way?
No. No. And no.
Once you move an untrustworthy person to the periphery of your life, where he can’t do you any further damage, you no longer need the weapon of anger to protect you. Letting go of it is about switching perspective from “things to run away from” to “things to run toward.”
I don’t know precisely how to do that. But I know it’s necessary. And I know it’s possible.
What are your thoughts on forgiveness?
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