Tagged: “Dr. Robert Enright”
My sister was very unfair to me, and while I can sympathize with her, I find it difficult to put myself in her position and experience what it’s like to be her. Will I ever be able to have compassion toward her without my having empathy?
Not having empathy right now toward your sister does not imply you can’t do it in the future. Yes, empathy can open the door to compassion. Sympathy, or feeling sorry for her, also may be one of the doors to your eventual development of compassion. Yet, as you are seeing, empathy is the deeper, even a more challenging approach. Here are some questions that might help you develop empathy toward your sister: Was your sister hurt by others in her past? How deeply do you think was she hurt? Is she still carrying emotional wounds from this? Can you see your sister’s struggles in life? Your answers may lead to a greater empathy for her as you see her internal, emotional wounds from her point of view.
You talk about being committed to the forgiveness process in the book Forgiveness Is a Choice (2019). I now am wondering how I can stay committed to the process of forgiveness when there still is residual hurt, and I just want to move on and forget about it.
When people forgive, it does not always mean that all anger is eliminated. The anger can lessen and this is of vital importance especially if the anger initially was intense and enduring. As you forgive, even though some anger might remain, you then are in control of the anger rather than having the anger control you. So, please be encouraged if your anger is lessening. If you have a goal of continuing to be committed to the forgiveness process, then I recommend being aware of what I call your strong will, which I discuss in the book The Forgiving Life (2012). A strong will helps you to stay on the task even when it is painful to do so. Certainly, you need to take breaks from the forgiveness process, refresh, and then continue the journey. In other words, you need the virtue of temperance when on the challenging journey of forgiveness.
Could pride prevent us from being forgiving? To put it another way, pride might make people firmly stand their ground and tell themselves, “I will never forgive unless the other person apologizes!”
Yes, I do believe that pride can occasionally result in such a statement. However, we must exercise caution because some cultures and religions require an apology before a person would forgive. The individual who needs the apology may find it helpful to consider the following questions if pride is impeding the process of forgiveness: “Are you hurting yourself by insisting on the apology? If so, in what way? As you wait for an answer from the other, may you be keeping yourself from letting go of emotional challenges and lessening resentment?”
Forgiveness strikes me as illegitimate. Here I am angry with a person, and so I start acting toward him as if all is well. That seems phony to me.
You are misunderstanding what forgiveness is. It is not about only actions toward the person at whom you are angry. Forgiveness is a more holistic moral virtue than this in that it includes a transformation toward more positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward that person. When you act in a forgiving way, the more holistic approach includes both a softened heart with compassion as well as thoughts toward the person as someone of worth, not because of what was done but in spite of this. The behavior toward that person then includes these feelings and thoughts so that the behavior is not superficial or, as you say, phony.
I am a teacher, and my school is becoming interested in starting forgiveness education from kindergarten through grade 5. We have what are called restorative programs and so I am wondering what is the link between learning to forgive and practicing restorative justice.
Restorative practices tend to focus on dialogue, particularly dialogue in circles. This is a more behavioral approach than forgiveness, which focuses on what I call “the heart.” In other words, people who are angry with each other can dialogue civilly while in the circle, but if the heart is not healed of resentment, that anger can re-emerge once the circle ends for that day. Forgiveness first works on the anger in the heart so that the dialogue then might be more fruitful because the people are talking without deep resentment in the heart. Restorative practices and forgiveness can work very well together. I recommend this: First, work on forgiving those with whom you will dialogue in the circle and then enter the dialogue. It also could work this way: Enter the dialogue, and this could start to soften the heart toward whom you are angry. Then work on the forgiveness process after the circle ends.
