Forgiveness: classic or dud?

as a former boss once said to me,

"hating somebody is like letting them live in your head rent-free"

classic.

Classic in every way. To echo what sleeve's boss said, I've always liked the saying, "Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies."

classic, because the consequences of the alternative don't bear thinking about.

except where thatcher, bush, pol pot etc are concerned.

Yah, even more classic is forgiving one's self. Life is short. Forgiveness can stir up all kinds of crazy shit, but it's very healing. Very much so.

That is the hard one. That and chimos.

Er, what is "chimos"? Google only seems to reveal an Edmonton women's hockey team...which, admittedly, I have all manner of problems with, but...

Sorry, child molesters. The only way to talk about it is to cry or laugh cruelly.

But yeah, forgive yourself, please.

I am not an I-hate-Christianity person, but I think that religion and its cultural legacy has done all manner of unholy things as far as encouraging people to distrust themselves with a vengeance. Trying to be human while accepting a basic premise that being human is faulty in and of itself seems like an unfailing recipe for a life of misery fueled by self-recrimination.

I gather that some people get down with the Jesus thing by thinking, "oh. it's totally alright, if I'm a fuck-up! God loves me, anyhow! What a sweetheart!"...but it still seems like some major head-fuck to me....Jesus suffered all manner of stuff because of this white lie that you just told, etc!!!

Surely there is a better way to negotiate one's superego-prompted self-loathing and perfectionism.

Aye self forgiveness infinitely harder than forgiving others. I'm the queen of giving people infinite second chances and/or dropping a grudge, even if out of my own selfishness so I can forget worrying about something. Im a lover not a fighter etc etc.

Also, its an ace Engineers song innit.

xxpost

oh, gotcha. Never heard that term before. I read an introduction to a text of the Bodhicaryavatara that attempted to address that sort of thing...it sort of made sense to me at the time, but you gotta figure into the picture that I tend to believe in some cosmic justice system wherein I end up feeling as much if not more for the people perpetuating such crimes as I do for the victims. I don't know if that makes sense, but...

Forgiveness is classic. Gullibleness, however, is not.

True that, but that involves learning how not to get INTO such situations to begin with, rather than having to clean up the emo mess after.

I end up feeling as much if not more for the people perpetuating such crimes as I do for the victims

Dell, save for the "cosmic justice" thing, I agree. This may come from having seen "The Woodsman" and "Capturing the Friedmans" within the same month or so. Then I think, "Would I want them around my kids?" Well, no, obviously (NB I do not yet have kids).

Forgiving one's self for being gullible...

What I mean by that is that there needs be a limit to forgiveness. Maybe it's OK to forgive yr significant other 100,000,000 times for forgetting to put the cap on the toothpaste and it's OK to forgive them once for cheating on you. My feeling is that it's not OK to forgive them for cheating on you 100 times.

(Forgiving even one cheat is perhaps a stretch.)

people make mistakes?

Yeah, A., I have not seen Capturing the Friedmans, and don't know what The Woodsman is. But I think I get the drift of what you're saying?

I guess it's in some sense the worst of crimes? At least, societally speaking? (e.g., the whole thing about "chimos" occupying the most pariah status in prisons and so forth)

...which only makes me feel worse for them, in a sense. Based on the pessimistic stats as far as rehabilitation goes, I feel like they are some truly doomed folks.

forgiveness is a necessity, so "classic" is out. Dud for being hard.

You have a good point.

I don't think I am very good at forgiveness so much as my memory is too shitty for effective grudgefulness.

ALso the more I think about if the less importance I attribute to forgiveness. It is one of those things that if I think too much about it fucks with me. eg how do you know you have really in your heart forgiven someone? Additionally, if it really feels like a BURDEN to forgive someone, or an impossible thing to do, why do it? Like I have to admit thyere is one person in my life who (this is kind of fucked up) I enjoy actively withholding forgiveness. Like I spent a number of years fretting pretty hard about how was I going to accomplish forgiving this person (maybe the reason I started this thread)? And ultimately I decided: I wouldn't do it, and it felt really satisfying. Not like I am sitting in my owl self-made Chateau d'If actively nursing a grudge, but knowing I didn't have to force myself this thing that I didn't want to do and maybe wasn't necessary. Perhaps this is all an abstraction to all of you.

I look back on posts back in 20098 like this that I made and think I seemed almost unreasonably sweet & wholesome. Like impossibly so. At heart I think I am kind of a fuckhead & my resolve to say no to forgiveness is part of this. Is it secretly poisoning my heart?

I think all of the stories I have ever heard that DID involve impossible forgiveness had a divine intercessor. Like Jesus finally helps you cross the bridge to forgiveness. Am I a wretched fuck for not even thinking this is graspable? Am I totally fucking hopeless for thinking that not forgiving this person is an actual source of gratification? Is forgiveness even real or achievable? Am I doomed to be the portrait of a conflicted individual for all of time?

Maybe God would forgive me of all this conflict if I spent the rest of my sabbaths ruining ILX with my tl;dr self-examining bullshit.

That was not tl, I r'd it!

I don't have a lot of thoughts on this topic, though. There's another thread somewhere in which a distinction is made between forgiving and forgetting -- they are not the same.

I have often heard that said but if you forget, and do not forgive –– how is that different than doing both?

Because there's intent behind forgiveness, and the intent matters. The more I think about it and divorce it from the Christian tradition (because the teachings of Jesus Christ can bite me), the more I think forgiveness is really only an exercise for yourself. I think it's good for you, generally speaking. You don't have to even let the other person know about it, it's just an exercise in not building up expectations for badness from them in the future. Like, if you are always in the moment, there's no pre-judgment before the moment gets there -- that's something like total forgiveness, where an offense given by someone else just passes by and is gone and the new moment is new and full of possibility.

HOWEVER, I don't live in the moment in any substantial way and neither does anyone else I know and even if they did, it wouldn't mean letting someone hurt you or offend you again and again.

I guess that is the balance – forgiving someone but still maintaining enough sense/boundaries to avoid reruns of the same thing in the future. I don't know how to do it.

And I have to say at this point in my life the latter is more important than the former!

the thread issue came into my head recently, due to these comments from the dalai lama.

http://www.newstalk.ie/2011/news/1dalai-lama-forgive-bankers-and-politicians63/

i did not like him chiming in on this one. forgiveness shouldn't be rushed.

bearing grudges against people you want to like is really hard and nasty work. It's a doddle with some peopld though.

Ok the more I think about it, the more I feel like I never understood the forgive but don't forget thing.

abbbottt have you ever read this?

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

in many ways it's even more annoying and impossible than the teachings of jesus christ but it usually works to get my head into a good angle for thinking about things like this

as an fyi i r'd too, tho i don't really know what i think on this thing. my thing is generally being an utterly passive "yeah we cool" while i bubble under. so i don't know. i guess if you actually want to forgive someone you need to really work through what you're feeling in the situation. if you have no interest in that, yeah, fuckit, they can go unforgiven.

ignore me, me drnk.

there was some robot competition in some game where it was possible to screw over other players, and after multiple generations of evolution, the optimal strategy turned out to be 1) be nice, then 2) if someone screws you over, do tit-for-tat, then 3) forgive, so some dumb robots figured out both the golden rule and forgiveness. They didn't need robot jesus or whomever to show them. I mean, robot jesus would probably have been crucified in round one.

Our culture is so big on vengeance and Tough Love right now, so it might be a good idea to be into forgiveness and compassion, just as a counterweight. That's my take on it.

But we're also into big into redemption and forgiveness, too -- We'll forgive anything! I think the shitty part of our culture of forgiveness and redemption is that it's contingent on the remorse of the offender, which really debases forgiveness into a kind of free luggage set you get for sitting in on a timeshare presentation and pretending you're really interested, but really you need a new duffel bag.

I think it's good for you, generally speaking. You don't have to even let the other person know about it, it's just an exercise in not building up expectations for badness from them in the future.

^^^otm

also forgiveness is much easier to grant when the offending person is actively seeking it. if they aren't... well you may still forgive them (if only because bearing grudges isn't really healthy for you mentally) but you will probably need to set some boundaries so that they do not continue to hurt you.

like "I forgive you for being such a dick. but if you cannot accept/acknowledge that you caused me pain, just stay away from me."

Quite: the fundamental thing abt forgiveness is letting go of your own anger and bitterness, exercising compassion to the point where you can feel at least neutral towards the person who has committed the offence, if not warm. But you absolutely don't have to condone what they did, or refrain from taking action to stop it happening again.

Remorse is helpful because it means the transgressor is taking responsibility *themselves* for preventing recurrance. W/o (genuine) remorse you have no reason to trust them, and the onus is on you to take steps. Hence the not forgetting part.

I think what really rankles me about this person is when I brought it up that they had really caused me a fuckton of grief, their rxn was, "I'm forgiven, then?" Uh, no, not yet. In their minds I have been on good terms with them since that day, tho, no matter what I say. So I feel like however this process is actually supposed to work has been taken away from me. At that point why not just say fuck it? Also note that this person is totally crazy so there probably can't ever be a normal process of anything with them.

I do like Christine's point, tho. I am not a person motivated by vengeance at all – I don't think I am, anyway. I have a friendly relationship with this person (more out of necessity than anything) while at the same time keeping enough distance, saying no, etc, whatever, to keep myself sane. Like I said, I don't think this is a personal Chateau d'If or like something poisoning my soul slowly like Frodo putting on the ring over & over. It just feels good to say I don't have to force myself to feel good about a situation that I don't feel good about (which I guess in my mind is the definition of forgiveness).

Confused Turtle (Zora) otm

It is possible to have compassion for a person who shows no sign of understanding the pain they cause or taking responsibility for their actions, but compassion does not require you to glide them further along that harmful path, by continuing to grant them your trust or respect when they do nothing to earn it.

I don't have to force myself to feel good about a situation that I don't feel good about (which I guess in my mind is the definition of forgiveness).

Nah. It's about allowing yourself to let go of your pain, and thus avoid bitterness. Sounds like embracing the fact that you do feel pretty pissed off w/ this person is probably moving you in the right direction anyhow, if it's making you feel better? Sometimes you have to acknowledge what you're holding on to before you can let go of it.

I'll admit that my understanding of forgiveness is mostly Buddhist; Christian traditions may imply something different.

Aimless, yes yes, and I think this is the same thing Laurel, Shakey Mo and others were saying upthread also.

Since most of us are probably Western English speakers, I am guessing that Judeo-Christianity is the dominant ideology discussions of forgiveness. Even atheists often use some paraphrasing of Judeo-Christianity. In any case, if people are going to tell people not to be "bitter" or angry, they shouldn't use Judeo-Christian morality because this is not what the scriptures say. Nowhere does it say that being angry is bad. Jesus, for example, comes off as an angry guy. People who tell you not to be bitter are trying to get inside your head. It's not about how you feel, it is what you do with it.

...and trying to get inside someone's head is bad because....

more than one and things start to get crowded

I don't think I am very good at forgiveness so much as my memory is too shitty for effective grudgefulness.

all just fwiw - I don't think there's such a thing as being "good at" forgiving - it's not like you're better at it if you do it quickly. The question is how completely you're able to do it, and the reason you do it isn't to "be a good person" - what would that even mean - but because the person you will probably most enjoy being in this, your one pass at this life, and the person who will be able to give the most to the ones you love which is its own incomparable satisfaction, and the person who will be able to treat herself/himself best, thereby giving you the best life you can have: that person is the one who forgives.

I say this as a person who has only had the pleasure of gleaning what it would truly be like to forgive; I can't forgive my younger self for the monster he was, for the people he hurt; on my best days I come near it, and on those days, the power of the person I would most like to be is palpable and real to me. I can understand the other people that I can't yet completely forgive. But the best aerosmith is the one whose actual goal in life is to forgive & love everybody who he knows is sometimes a very shitty person, including himself: that's the guy I want to have been for a whole day at least once before I die.

*applauds*

Telling someone they are "angry" or bitter isn't fair to them, it is an abuse or power, no one lives inside someone else's head. It is wrong and an abuse to tell someone how to "feel". Actions are more important than feelings. I have all sorts of biases and inclinations, they are no one's business but the people I choose to tell, being an adult is keeping those inclinations in check. I try not to bring any bias or anger or resentment into the workplace, for example, it's not professional. I was hired to do a job and serve everyone regardless of religion or what they wear to work or whatever....in any case, I find it difficult to get along at work when I have to think about judging people because they're some type of person that is "ignorant" or whatever.

Bullshit. When I tell someone that they should not be angry or bitter, I'm *giving someone advice*, not *ordering them to do something*.

What if you tell someone they are angry or bitter but they didn't ask you for advice? I respect your own take on it, there is no such thing as "bullshit". I am talking about my own experience, where people tell you to change because you are angry about something. I'll admit you may have the ultimate life wisdom, please share how I am categorically wrong and have learned nothing in life.

calling somebody out as 'angry' is, in effect, chopping them off at the knees – it's diminishing the potency and legitimacy of the words they use. it's irate-making, like telling somebody to 'calm down' when you're really just trying to provoke them

I can understand that, depends on what you mean by "angry", I mean if I'm scaring someone by screaming at them, I guess "calm down" makes sense. What grates on me is someone going "why so angry" to me or anyone else who isn't all smiley all the time. Or berating you for getting angry about something that is worth getting angry about.

I try not to call people "angry" or "bitter" online unless they have a long track record of being that way, just because you don't know how they feel, you can't see them. If someone made angry threatening posts to a site that has millions of users I might react to it but on a message board, no. Maybe they are just having a bad day.

In any case, forgiveness (or the choice not to forgive) is something I reserve for serious matters, not, like, friends who fought with me or said something mean in high school.

xp

Telling someone they are angry is usually as superfluous as telling them they are breathing. They know it. Pointing it out adds little to the interaction.

Anger can manifest itself in many ways, including ways that are not evenl remotely reasonable, just, sociable or wise. It can also manifest itself as a raised voice or obvious agitation, while at the same time one's words and actions are entirely reasonable, calm, fitting and without malice or intent to harm.

If you can distinguish between both these modes of anger, and the degrees between, then you can more easily respond to the content of those words or actions, not the mere fact of the anger.

I think, though, that when Christine imagines telling someone they are angry, it is in the context where the anger is clouding their ability to see what is true, and her counsel is to let the cloud of anger disperse before doing or saying things rashly that can only make matters worse. Saying "you're angry" looks to me to be just a shorthand way to express this thought on ilx. IRL, she may expand on this in more telling and helpful ways.

aero u got the magic words man

^^ will sign on to this, too

yeah no doubt...great sentiment in your post, aero

I get the sense that a kid who gets his record expunged after good behavior is truly forgiven while a guy who "pays his debt" to society but still has a record hanging over his head is sort of in this same limbo that y'all are talking about when you say to forgive but not forget.
I think forgetting has to play a good part of forgiving. Otherwise this thing we're calling forgiveness is really more like a detente, which has its own merits, but a lot of times I feel you don't even need to carry a grudge in order for the weight of history to pull all parties down.

^^^

I think, though, that when Christine imagines telling someone they are angry, it is in the context where the anger is clouding their ability to see what is true, and her counsel is to let the cloud of anger disperse before doing or saying things rashly that can only make matters worse. Saying "you're angry" looks to me to be just a shorthand way to express this thought on ilx. IRL, she may expand on this in more telling and helpful ways.

I do. I was thinking more about the bitterness part of what we were talking about, the anger part pretty much washed over my head.

So...is this achievable by humans...or...not?

Just kidding y'all have been helpful. I just hate introspectin' I guess.

yah i read this essay by i think richard cohen in the wash post yrs ago and he was talking about something, i dunno, billy clinton and monica lewinsky or something, and right upfront he was all 'yah but i don't ever get self-reflective, jeez are you kidding me i avoid that like the plague' and at the time i was like wtf?? you crazy man, i mean, it totally fucking floored me to read someone talking like that, b/c for me being self-reflectivee or whatevrah is the fucking order of the day, just a constant habit, twirling the yo-yo...but then again i guess that partially explains why i tend to be so obnoxiously self-absorbed at times and clueless in different ways and overthinking and passive

Now that online poker is dead, introspection is my favorite hobby.

yeah, but how much money is there in painting pictures of dogs introspecting

that's like tabloids writing about billy clinton formulating foreign policy

but as for forgiving, that comes easy to me b/c a. i am forgetful and b. i can't be bothered holding grudge

and the most traumatic thing ever happened in my life, well the person responsible for it is dead now, so eh

The hipster puppies thing just looks like dogs introspecting to me.

haha you're totally right!!!

The only grudge I've continued to hold for any amount of time was a person who was just a total monster to my wife, really kicked her when she was down. My wife has been able to forgive her, but I haven't.

I should introduce you all to my husband's family--grudges, arguing and a few actual crimes are the main way they communicate with each other. It's one reason why I'm so adamant on this issue.