Ask Dr. Forgiveness
In my attempts to forgive, I try to respond with empathy and compassion to the one who hurt me. Is it possible to have such deep empathy and compassion that these qualities just abide in a person and are there, to be appropriated, any time and any place for any person and for any reason?
Yes, it is possible to carefully cultivate the qualities of empathy and compassion so that they are part of who you are as a person. I call it becoming “forgivingly fit.” It takes practice and then even more practice over years to develop such a deep, abiding sense of these qualities. As a motivation for you to so cultivate these, I have a chapter in the book, The Forgiving Life, in which I challenge the reader to leave a legacy of love in this world. To do so requires conscious effort and time so that you leave more love than anger in this challenging world when you die. If you have this legacy as a goal, it may be easier to stay at the task of practicing daily the qualities of empathy and compassion.
You talk of a “global perspective” when forgiving another person. What is the global perspective and can one still take that perspective when the other has done something horrible?
The global perspective challenges the offended person to see the genuine humanity in all people, including those who do horrible acts. For example, is this person mortal; will he or she die some day? If she is cut, will she bleed? Does he need air to breath and a little plot of land to stand on…..just as you do? It is hard to take such a perspective when calling someone “inhuman” or “a monster.” Yet, and some people will disagree with this, isn’t that a distortion of whom the offending person is? Are not those who act horribly still human beings? They do not become ducks or deer or chimpanzees. They remain…..human. The global perspective is one of the large challenges of forgiveness, to see the humanity in the other.
Can someone forgive a tornado if it destroyed his home?
Forgiveness is toward people who have been unfair. Can a tornado be unfair? No, because a tornado has no intentions to do evil. One can work on acceptance of what happened, but it would be a distortion of forgiveness if you encouraged someone to forgive an inanimate object. A goal of forgiveness, not always possible, is to enter back into a loving or respectful relationship with that person. One cannot ever enter into a loving relationship with a tornado.
From the reading I have done, it seems that forgiving others for specific hurts will reduce anger in the one who forgives. Yet, what if someone seems to be an angry person generally without a specific other in mind to forgive. Will learning how to forgive be as effective for this person as for another who knows precisely who hurt her and what that injustice is?
If someone seems to be generally angry and is not able to specify at whom or toward what she is angry, this does not necessarily mean that no such person or event(s) exist. Sometimes people are in denial about their anger and think it is part of their general personality or think that they inherited a sensitive nervous system. Yet, with further exploration, usually it is possible to identify a person or persons or some event(s) that have made the person resentful. My advice is to work with the person, if she wishes, to uncover from the past that which is making her so angry so much of the time. There usually is a reason for it tied to something that has happened in the person’s life.
Even if a child learns how to forgive through forgiveness education, is it possible that if something horrific happens to him in adulthood then he might find it impossible to forgive, even with that prior training?
Yes, it is possible that even with the best of training, someone as an adult might decide not to forgive someone for a horrific injustice. After all, forgiveness is a choice. Yet, even if the person refuses to forgive, this does not mean that this is his final word on the matter. With time, the person may decide to forgive. We have to be gentle with anyone in such a difficult situation.
