Anyone familiar with Italian opera or the
plays of Shakespeare knows the terrible price paid for grudges, vendetta, and revenge. Under
the sway of these emotions painful incidents linger in the mind, sapping our ability to
find peace and happiness. The 18th century English poet, Alexander Pope, gave us the antidote: " to err is human, to forgive divine." But finding a way to forgive without giving
up our principles is often no easy task. In this course, I am going to address what forgiveness
is and how to implement it. I'll be speaking here about forgiveness where
it most often is needed -- in the context of your every day personal life with family members, friends, co-workers, and business associates. One of our challenges in understanding this
process is that the word -- forgiveness -- is inadequate to explain a very complex concept.
Forgiveness actually embodies three different things, each of which applies to different
situations and provides different results. The three types of forgiveness are: Exoneration
Forbearance and
Release Let's take each in turn. Exoneration is the closest to what we usually
think of when we say "forgiveness". Exoneration is wiping the slate entirely clean and restoring a relationship to the full state of innocence it had before the harmful actions took place. There are three common situations in which exoneration applies. The first takes place when you realize that
the harmful action was a genuine accident for which no fault can be assigned. The second is when the offender is a child
or someone else who, for whatever reason, simply didn't understand the hurt they were
inflicting, and toward whom you have loving feelings. The third situation occurs when the person
who hurt you is • Truly sorry,
• Takes full responsibility (without excuses) for what they did,
• Asks forgiveness, • And gives you confidence that they will
not knowingly repeat their bad action in the future. In all such situations it is essential to
accept their apology and offer them the complete forgiveness of exoneration. You'll feel better
and so will the person who hurt you. In fact, not to offer forgiveness in these circumstances
would be harmful to your own well-being. It might even suggest that there is something
more wrong with you than with the person who caused you pain. The second type of forgiveness I call "forbearance."
And here things get a little more complicated. Forbearance applies when the offender makes
a partial apology or mingles their expression of sorrow with blame that you somehow caused
them to behave badly. An apology is offered but it's not what you had hoped for and may
not even be fully authentic. While you should always reflect on whether there was a provocation
on your part, even when you bear no responsibility you should exercise forbearance if the relationship matters to you. Cease dwelling on the particular offense, do away with grudges and fantasies
of revenge, but retain a degree of watchfulness. This is similar to "forgive but not forget"
or "trust but verify." By using forbearance you are able to maintain ties to people who,
while far from perfect, are still important to you. Furthermore, in some cases after a sufficient
period of good behavior,rise forbearance can to exoneration and full forgiveness. But what do you do when the person who hurt
you doesn't even acknowledge that they've done anything wrong or gives an obviously
insincere apology, making no reparations whatsoever? These are the cases of forgiveness that are
the most challenging. In my practice, I find this in such examples as adult survivors of
child abuse, business people who have been cheated by their partners, or friends or relatives
who have betrayed one another. Still, even here there still is a solution. I call it
"release" -- the third type of forgiveness. Release does not exonerate the offender. Nor
does it require forbearance. It doesn't even demand that you continue the relationship. But it does ask that you, instead of continuing to define much of your life in terms of the
hurt done, allows you to release bad feelings and your preoccupation with the negative things
that may have happened to you. Release does something that is critically important: it
allows you to let go of the burden, the "silent tax" that is weighing you down and eating
away at your chance for happiness. If you do not release the pain and anger and move
past dwelling on old hurts and betrayals, you will be allowing the ones who hurt you
to live, rent free, in your mind, reliving forever the persecution that the original
incident started. Whether you get there through your own efforts,
through psychotherapy, through religion or some other method, release liberates you from
the tyranny of living in the traumatic past even when the other forms of forgiveness,
exoneration and forebearance, are not possible. Exoneration Forbearance Release To forgive may be divine, but when we understand
its dimensions we find that it is within our ability to do it. I'm Dr. Stephen Marmer of UCLA Medical School,
for Prager University.
