Archive for December, 2022
I am working for a company that does not have good human relations skills. There is a subtle sense of disrespect that pervades the work environment. Do I forgive certain people or do I begin to forgive the company? If you say it is the company, how do you go about forgiving such an abstract entity?
You can forgive those who specifically have hurt you. Also, because the company is made up of persons who either explicitly or implicitly have created this norm of disrespect, you can forgive the company personnel who have established this unhealthy norm. You can forgive these persons even if you never met them. After all, they are persons and they have made mistakes in how they operate. Even if this company was established 100 years ago, you can forgive those who started the company if it seems that this norm of disrespect was cultivated by them.
Will my forgiving help me to overcome the insecurity that bad things won’t happen again?
The intent of forgiving is not to reduce in one’s mind the probability that bad things will not happen in the future. Instead, forgiveness offers this safeguard: No matter what happens that is unfair to me, forgiveness will help me to reduce resentment, not be overcome by anger, and to move forward with the confidence that I can overcome emotional distress if others treat me unfairly.
How can I handle another person’s apology when that person does not change?
You can try to forgive before speaking and then, as gently as you can, ask the person for change that is fair to you and to the relationship. As you are seeing, an apology by itself can be superficial if the other does not take steps to change the behavior that was in need of the apology in the first place.
If we do not forgive situations, such as a tornado that was destructive, how can we aid children in feeling safe after something like this occurs? In other words, how then can we avoid post-traumatic feelings in the child?
You can work on two issues. The first is acceptance of what happened. This can take time, but it may help children learn that this is an imperfect world and so bad things do happen. The second is to work on what I call “the safe feeling,” which is a sense of being protected by parents and other loved ones. Of course, the “safe feeling” should not become an illusion that bad things will not happen. Working simultaneously on acceptance that bad things can happen, and that loved ones are here to assist, may help the child reduce any post-traumatic stress that has emerged.
When we forgive, do we forgive situation or persons?
If forgiveness is a moral virtue in which we are good to persons who are not good to us, then this is a focus exclusively on persons and not on situations. If you think about it, how can you practice moral goodness toward a situation? You cannot be good to a tornado or to a traffic jam. If persons are responsible for the traffic jam and if they are acting unfairly in some way, then you can forgive those persons, but you do not forgive the situation.
