Archive for February, 2020
I started the process of forgiving my mother. As I went on this journey, I realized that she was treated very badly by my grandmother, who passed away before I was born. Should I also forgive my grandmother, even though I never met her?
Yes, you can forgive your grandmother. This is what the philosopher, Trudy Govier, calls secondary forgiveness. Even though your grandmother was not directly unjust to you, she was indirectly unjust to you because of what she did to your mother.
You might want to read this essay from Psychology Today: Can You Forgive a Person Who Has Died?
Starting forgiveness is not so bad, but continuing with it is rough. I kind of want to move on to other things in my life. So, how do I persevere to the end and complete forgiveness without giving up?
In the book, The Forgiving Life, I talk about the good will, the free will, and the strong will. The good will allows you to see those who hurt you in all of their woundedness and to respond to them with kindness. The free will allows you to say “yes” to the forgiveness process itself. The strong will allows you to keep going even though it is difficult.
Try to be aware of the strong will. Cultivate it in other areas even apart from forgiveness. For example, stay with the challenge of an exercise program; finish the book you started; complete a home-project that you started a while back. These efforts can strengthen the strong will which can advance you toward the finish line of forgiveness. Please keep in mind that even when you reach that finish line of forgiveness, anger can resurface later. Apply the good will, the free will, and the strong will again as you revisit the forgiveness process.
For additional information, see On the Importance of Perseverance when Forgiving.
Can I begin the forgiveness process without an actual commitment to forgive, or must I have a firm inner commitment before starting?
Because forgiveness is a process, you do not need a firm commitment to forgive as you start. You can tentatively try forgiving and see how it goes. You can stop for a while and start again. As you progress and deepen in your understanding and appropriation of forgiving, you then may move to the conviction that you are committed to the forgiveness process. One way to start this commitment is to say to yourself that you will do no harm to the one who injured you. This “do no harm” often is the beginning of the commitment for many people who go through our Process Model of Forgiveness.
For additional information, see The Four Phases of Forgiveness.
I really do not understand this pie-in-the-sky idea that I must feel positively toward the people whom I forgive. How about just some indifference toward them?
Think of forgiveness as a process. We start out with anger or sadness or some other emotion that we find unpleasant. As we grow in the moral virtue of forgiveness, the anger (or sadness) begins to diminish and we then can develop a kind of indifference toward that person. Yet, over time, and because forgiveness is a moral virtue, we might continue to grow even more deeply in our appreciation of the other as a person. This can lead to compassion, respect, generosity, and even love (the kind of love that is willing to be in service to the other for the other’s sake) toward that person. So, you might want to think of indifference as one stop on the journey to greater perfection in the growth of this moral virtue of forgiveness.
For additional information, see The Four Phases of Forgiveness.
My mental health professional seems to think that I have a genetic predisposition to psychological depression. If this is true, then biology and not past trauma is responsible for my current condition. Can I just forget about forgiving then under this circumstance?
Even if you have a biological predisposition to depression, forgiveness can help with the medication you might be taking. Think through your history of being treated unfairly from childhood to the present. You can do this by consulting the Forgiveness Landscape from my book, The Forgiving Life. If you identify certain people toward whom you still have considerable anger, then it would be good, if you so choose, to forgiven them. See if this aids your recovery from depression.
For additional information, see Why Forgive?