Forgiveness

I got some advice from someone who strikes me as very sincere and caring. She instinctively told me that in order to move forward one of the things that I must do in order to move forward is to forgive someone close to me. I needed to let go of all of the perceived injuries and slights that I have felt from them over the course of my relationship with them. I thought for a few minutes and agreed that it was a truly good idea. I would be able to once and for all let go of all of the things that I had carried around with me. I could flush out all of the toxicity that I associated with this person, take back all of the energy that I had devoted to keeping the hurt alive, and get on with my life.

So I took a few days and wrote down all of the things that bothered me generally about the person. I tried to skip all of the ridiculous things that this person had done and focused on the overall tone and tenor of our relationship. The letter was very direct, accusatory, and, dare I say, hurtful. It also fully conveyed my feelings and allowed me a certain level of catharsis.

After talking with a trusted advisor, I determined not to send it to this person. I understood that it helped me. I also understood that the reason that I wrote it was the reason that I could not give it to the person. This person’s attitude and lack of real understanding and flexibility would combine to do further and possibly irreparable damage to our already damaged relationship. Instead, I took it outside to burn it and symbolically destroy and release all that I found hurtful and damaging in our relationship.

I let all of my bad feelings go and for a while everything was good. I took no offense at things that I would have previously allowed to drive me into a blind rage. Slowly, but surely, the same old behaviors started to get to me. I took the step of trying to keep myself separate from my antagonist in an effort to minimize any possible injury and insult.

As I thought about this relationship, I began to think that I was fooling myself about trying to engage in forgiveness. Maybe I was being naïve and hoping to mitigate the effects of this person’s continued destructive behavior. I realized that this person’s behavior was not going to change and that I was going to have to find some way to deal with it.

I talked with my advisor again and we had a good talk about what forgiveness really means and how to begin dealing with these types of situations. He told me that he had coincidently just been to a meeting in which the topic of the invited speaker was forgiveness. This person was a trained psychoanalyst and had some interesting things to say about the subject. He said that forgiveness does not always take a standard shape. It is not that old schoolyard phrase of “forgive and forget.” It is OK in some situations to forgive and subsequently not have anything to do with the offending party. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting and volunteering back into the same, old hurtful situations. In essence, there is no standard definition of forgiving and any type of forgiveness must help people to move forward. (At least that is what I took away from our talk.)

So, I began to consider all of the possibilities of my talk as I went back to interacting with this person. I kept seeing that this person’s behavior was not changing although mine was. They were engaged in the same type of destructive nonsense in which they always participated. I began to understand that they were not going to change because they had no true incentive to change. This person is probably going to their grave as they are now. That is their choice and they on whatever level are fine with who they are, despite the fact that they continue to alienate the people around them to whom they are supposed to be the closest.

All of this brings me to a recent lunch that I had with a very smart friend of mine. We have known each other forever and have had some similar experiences. Talking with him gave me some insight into more of the nature of forgiveness. Forgiveness is really not about the person being forgiven, it is about the person doing the forgiving. For me, it is about making a decision to deal with this person differently. It is also about changing me, accepting the other person in the relationship, and recognizing that I really don’t have the power to change the other person no matter how much I wish that I could.

I gained the understanding that intangible concepts like forgiveness and all of those other emotional and ethereal things have certain plasticity to them; they are malleable and can be stretched and shaped to our needs. Part of forgiveness for my situation is recognizing that because the person with whom I was in conflict is not going to change. They are going to continue to present the same type of off-putting and sometimes offensive behavior that they have been displaying as long as I can remember. Part of my responsibility is to keep reshaping and extending that forgiveness blanket to whatever shape and size it needs to be in order to cover any future acts. And more importantly, I will do my best not to take offense or dwell on the behaviors.

I think that the true essence of real forgiveness is limitless. The shape and size of my application of forgiveness are only limited by my own limitations. Maybe, just maybe, the Universe, or whoever I am around in the future, will be able to apply the same type of forgiveness to me when and if I ever go off the deep end and do something truly stupid.