Tagged: “break free from the past”
You say that part of forgiveness is to offer compassion toward the one who offended you. The one who hurt me has passed away. How can I begin to have compassion on this person?
Compassion includes at least four elements:
1) Sympathy toward the one who hurt you. Sympathy is an emotional reaction to another’s pain. For example, if someone comes to you angry that he just lost his job and now is struggling financially, you have sympathy when you feel sorry for the person. His anger and unfortunate situation leads to a different emotion in you: sadness.
2) Empathy toward the one who hurt you. Empathy is stepping inside the other’s shoes (so to speak) and feeling the same feeling as the other. Thus, when the other is angry, you empathize with that person when you also feel anger.
3) Behaving toward the other by supporting him or her in the time of distress. This could include a kind word or talking about the strategy of solving the job problem, as examples.
4) Suffering along with the person. This latter point is the deepest aspect of compassion. It could involve helping the person financially before a new job is secured; it could involve driving the person to a job interview.
In the case of having compassion for a deceased person, you can have sympathy and empathy (the first two elements of compassion), but you cannot engage in the other two elements because behavior with and toward the other is not possible. Compassion need not have all four elements to count as compassion. You can think of the hard times endured by the deceased person and react with sympathy and empathy. Such compassion may aid your forgiveness.
Learn more by reading any of these books by Dr. Forgiveness -Dr. Robert Enright:
I am feeling hopeless. I know people forgive to restore peace in a relationship, but that is not possible for me. What do you suggest?
Reasons for forgiveness go beyond only a restored relationship. You can forgive because it is good in and of itself. You can forgive to rid yourself of resentment. You can forgive to pass the insights on how to forgive to your children. Thus, even if a restored relationship is not possible, you still may forgive if you choose to do this. Our research shows that as people forgive, their sense of hope increases in a statistically-significant way. You need not remain with a sense of hopelessness.
Learn more at 8 Reasons to Forgive.
How can you create a forgiving community for oppressed people? Don’t you first have to validate the injustices by solving them? Forgiveness without such validity seems weak.
One can validate oppression by acknowledging it and calling it what it is: unfair. One can own one’s legitimate anger over the oppression. Yet, if one waits to actually solve the injustice before forgiving, then those who are oppressing win twice: once with original and ongoing oppression and second by having the oppressed people living under a constant state of unhealthy anger or resentment. That resentment, over time, might be so strong as to destroy individuals and families within that oppressed community. Forgiveness without a correction of the injustice at the very least solves that one problem of destructive resentment.
Learn more at Healing Hearts, Building Peace.
I have noticed that some of my friends just are angrier than others. They do not seem to show this anger only when recently treated unfairly by others. They are just angry people. Why do you think this would be?
Without knowing the person’s history, it is not possible to know for certain why one of your friends is consistently showing anger. I suspect two issues. First, the display of anger in the home, when your friend was growing up, might have been high. In other words, angry behavior was demonstrated in the home and implicitly approved as a norm. In other words, the friend learned anger by observing it being modeled in the home. Second, the friend may have been hurt by the anger displays in the home and so there is resentment from the past that is affecting the person now, in the present. If this second scenario is correct, then the friend might benefit from forgiving one of the parents who might have displaced the anger onto your friend while growing up.
Learn more at Family Forgiveness Guidelines.
I am in an unfortunate situation at work. My boss is overbearing to such an extent that I no longer want to work here. Yet, because of my current circumstances, I cannot leave my position. If I seek justice from the boss, I could be fired. So, what do you recommend?
When we forgive, we do not necessarily get the best result of a whole and fair relationship. If you forgive your boss, which I do recommend if you are ready, then at the very least, your resentment can lessen and so your inner world will not be as disrupted as it might have been. The forgiving may help you to have sufficient energy to apply for other positions if this opportunity arises. Even without justice in the workplace, you are taking steps to guard your inner world.
Learn more at What is Forgiveness?