Archive for September, 2018
Five different people as a group have hurt me. Do you recommend that I forgive one at a time or do I forgive them as a group?
Have the people played different roles in this group? For example, was one the leader who started to hurt you and perhaps encouraged others to join? If so, you probably should forgive one at a time. I would recommend that you rate the degree of hurt that each person gave to you and start with the one who hurt you the least. Once you think you have completed the forgiveness process with that person, move up the list to the next person. Eventually, you will reach the one who has hurt you the most and you will be well-practiced in the process of forgiveness.
Learn more at How to Forgive.
Is the gift-giving to an offending other person a way to prove to yourself that you, indeed, have forgiven?
The gift-giving in its essence is not for the forgiver, but instead is for the one forgiven. Forgiveness as a moral virtue is concerned with goodness and that goodness flows out of the forgiver to the forgiven. While the gift-giving can be a sign to you that you have forgiven, that is not its primary function. The primary function is to do good to the other as a moral act in and of itself.
Learn more about what forgiveness is and is not at What Is Forgiveness?
When I forgive my former boyfriend, I find that I tend to make excuses for his behavior. I don’t like it when I see that I am making excuses. How do I avoid this?
There is a big difference between what we call **reframing** a person’s actions and excusing those actions. For example, if you see that he was under pressure and displaced his anger onto you, you can forgive while at the same time acknowledging that he should not have treated you this way. An excuse is to say that displacing anger is ok, acceptable, or not morally wrong. When you forgive and start to reframe whom the other person is, try to keep in mind that the behavior still is not fair. Your separating a person and his actions may help you to avoid excusing the actions as you forgive the person.
Learn more at How to Forgive.
Grateful for Forgiveness
Editor’s Note: This is the true and very personal story of a woman who grew up amidst entrenched hatred and violence so common-place that it could have easily led her to a lifetime of cynicism, mistrust and skepticism. Instead, she chose to adopt forgiveness and peace-work as her way of life. This is her story.
Growing up in one of the most violent regions in the world has taught me that anything I care about can be taken from me at any second. As a child, I recall witnessing horrifically violent images constantly appearing on the television screen, and I still have memories of being confined in a bomb shelter during the 1991 Gulf War.
Somehow because we were children, my peers and I accepted this routine –the common ritual of periodically fitting gas masks on our heads in case a chemical attack should occur— as “normal.” We internalized the fact that any time we rode the bus there might be a terrorist attack against it (and many times there was), and we would be left to deal with the turmoil which was the reality into which we were born. We grew up with friends whose family members were brutally murdered in the middle of the street and who lost body parts or suffered horrific burns in terrorist attacks. Under these conditions, it was, and is, easy to hate and stereotype these “terrorists,” to wish them harm and never to consider what their lives are really like and what kinds of trauma they too have suffered.
But who are these “terrorists”? Do they have a name? A family? A dream for a safe home to return to? Is our pain from their attacks any greater or lesser than their pain? Although comparing pain is a slippery slope, one cannot help but wonder if we would all become “terrorists” if we were living under the same circumstances. As it is simply expressed in the Native American proverb: “Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins.”
We can easily dwell on our personal traumas and forget that violence and loss are universal conditions that people experience every minute all over the world. Perhaps an even greater challenge is to remember which roles each one of us passively plays in the construction of violence and abuse, such as through discrimination, consumption, and unfair trade. We fight and compete for resources, land, jobs, and recognition. The battle is real, and we may even have evidence to justify it to a certain degree, but what does it do to our bodies, our health, and to our past, present and future relationships?
What I have learned from my personal experience and relationships with those families who have lost loved ones is that forgiveness is a practice. In order to move through the trauma of my early years as an Israeli, I chose to adopt forgiveness and peace-work as a way of life. I understand how extremely short and fragile our lives are, and how crucial it is to place harmony with our environment as a priority. I have determined that spending our time in bitter punishment instead of restoring balance doesn’t help anyone.
Forgiveness is not easy, but when done authentically and with a supportive group of professionals, it is a sustainable alternative to entrenched hatred and violence. A successful practice in forgiveness can become a building block in the joyful and meaningful lives we are all seeking to build. Practicing forgiveness has been restoring lives in many conflict stricken areas around the world such as Northern Ireland and South Africa.
Forgiveness is a sustainable alternative to entrenched hatred and violence.
How can we balance our needs to survive in our competitive modern world with the need to be compassionate and forgiving? For me, this juggling act of balancing the fragile scales of justice and mercy became easier once I uncomfortably realized that the capacity to inflict harm dwells in all human beings and that I myself cause harm unintentionally pretty much every single day. This understanding created an overwhelming emotion which left me feeling stuck in some surreal Stanford experiment. But I do believe we have a choice in transcending these animalistic tendencies by daring to embrace forgiveness and compassion, for the lives of all those involved in the conflicts. This path of action is not a quick fix, but nevertheless, it is possible.
As my colleague Siobhan Chandler, Ph.D., explains, sometimes the first step in understanding how to move forward in a situation where there 
are multiple competing interests is to be intentional in asking for an outcome that is for the highest good of everyone involved. I believe that when we compassionately and respectfully consider the needs of others, we open a new gate of communication which re-humanizes our enemies and inches us towards a solution where it is possible that everyone’s needs are met.
My exposure to violence and conflict have opened me to participating in the growing forgiveness movement. More and more groups around the world have formed councils, restorative justice programs and healing circles, and have learned to overcome the trauma of human violence, to sit together, to talk, to listen, to forgive and to co-exist peacefully. These are people who have lost children to murder; who have lost their homes to bombing; who were betrayed and were left penniless. They have still managed to overcome the loss because they have realized that the enemy has a name, and a face, and a family and a story, just like we all do.
When the wounds of human violence are open and bleeding, delicate care and emotional sensitivity is required. The healing process often requires material and verbal reconciliation and restoration, but the foundational step is to recognize that a lack of forgiveness or justification of anger and revenge only destroys us, not our “enemy,” and makes us more physically sick, emotionally lonely and socially isolated. What if this form of “justice” doesn’t work, since whether it is us, or someone else committing a crime, when we place the stereotypical innocent victims against heartless criminals, both sides lose their humanity? As author David Wong said: “But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.”
I believe that deep down we all want to heal from the pains of losing that which we care about, to make sense of the losses we all experience in this hurting world. I wonder if at the heart of healing and forgiveness is the recognition that we all share excruciating moments (whether we admit them or not) of losing the irreplaceable – loved ones, romanticized dreams or unique possessions which we have cherished so deeply. Perhaps through this fundamental human recognition, we can decide to start healing by taking a small step and make forgiveness the topic of discussion over our next meal with those dear to our hearts.
To learn more about this writer please visit the Way of Life website at: www.wayof-life.com
Is there such a thing as Political Forgiveness, for example, to handle border disputes?
Yes, and this is sometimes called group forgiveness. Group forgiveness is different from one person forgiving another. In the latter, a person can change feeling, thoughts, and behaviors toward an offending other. Groups do not have feeling and thoughts (individuals within groups have the feeling and thoughts). So, only actions are part of group forgiveness such as proclamations of forgiveness or establishing norms within the group to try to be kind toward the other group as justice is pursued.
Here is the abstract of a journal article on this issue:
Enright, R.D., Lee, Y.R., Hirshberg, M.J., Litts, B.K., Schirmer, E.B., Irwin, A.J., Klatt, J., Hunt, J., & Song, J.Y. (2016). Examining group forgiveness: Conceptual and empirical issues. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 22, 153-162.
