Tagged: “Inherent Worth”
Why do you say that I likely will forgive better if I see the “potentiality” for love in the one who hurt me? To be quite honest with you, all I see is narcissism in the one who abruptly walked out on our relationship.
Aristotle makes the important distinction between Actuality (what is occurring now) and Potentiality (what underlies the current situation, including the capacity for greater perfection, even if we never reach true perfection). The one who abandoned you had the potential within to grow as a person, to develop more goodness within that then can be behaviorally demonstrated outwardly to others, including you. The narcissism of the other is a current Actuality. The person is capable of much more with conscious, deliberate effort to bring out a fuller humanity, a deeper sense and expression of love.
I don’t get it. So what if a person has the potential to be good. If she is not behaving in a good way, which basically is always, the idea of potential is worthless.
I want you to see that you are defining this person exclusively by behavior, not intangible qualities such as being a unique person. There never was another person exactly like her on the planet. In other words, there is more to her than her current behavior. She has a worth that goes beyond her current behavior with you. Your view of her seems to be too narrow.
It takes courage to say no to someone who hurt you. It is weakness to forgive.
Is it weak to strive to see the full humanity in someone who hurt you? Is it weak to stand in the pain of what happened so that you do not throw that pain back to that person or to unsuspecting others? Is it weakness to return a phone call if it is requested by someone who hurt you? To forgive is heroic because you try to be good to those who are not good to you and you do this while in pain, caused by that person.
OK, so to forgive is not a sign of weakness within the one who forgives. Yet, it seems to me that as you forgive another person, you actually weakened that other. I say that because you now are on the higher ground of forgiveness and the other sees the self standing lower because of the misbehavior. Forgiving weakens the other.
This is a misunderstanding of what it means to forgive another person. When you forgive, and when the other person “sees the self standing lower because of the misbehavior,” you do not let the other, in that person’s own judgement, remain in a lower position. Instead, you, as the forgiver, can say, “Come. Take my hand so we can stand side-by-side.” Forgiving is the challenge of seeing the other and you as both possessing equal worth as persons.
So, Then, What Has Changed in These Past 10 Years?
I re-read one of our posts here at the International Forgiveness Institute. It was dated February 29, 2012. What surprised me is this: It was as if I were reading a contemporary news item from 2022.
As you read the 10-year-old essay below, consider asking yourself this: Has anything changed for forgiveness within societies in that timespan? What must we do so that in 2032 the news is not a repetition of the past 20 years?
Here is that essay from 2012:
Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement is alleged to have said that a good society is one in which it is easy to be good. I write this blog post today as I reflect on some recent news stories (posted in our Forgiveness News section of this website). We have the shooting of innocent teenagers in Ohio and we have the murder of a 4-year-old. Anger can sometimes be deadly for the other person who just happens to be in the angry one’s way.
I wonder what those outcomes would have been had those with the weapons been bathed in forgiveness education from age 5 though 18. I wonder what those outcomes would have been had the weapon-carriers, as they grew up, practiced forgiveness in the home. I wonder.
The wounds in the world are deep and everlasting, it seems. What we do here at the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc. (helping people if they so choose to learn to forgive and then practice forgiveness) will never be out of date. Yet, my big worry (yes, it is a big worry) is this: Will there be sufficient laborers in the forgiveness vineyard to bring the virtue of forgiveness to children so that they can become fortified against the grave injustices that come to too many too often as adults?
I worry about those 6-year-olds, sitting now in classrooms, learning their mandated ABCs, without also learning the ABCs of how to deal with injustice. You see, society is not emphasizing forgiveness. We are not being taught forgiveness on a regular basis. We are in a society where it is not easy to be a good forgiver. And so too many of those who are bullied in school do not even think to forgive those who perpetrate the bullying. In Ohio this week, one bullied student’s response was a gun and then murder.
So much pain in the world and yet too many societies do not have the vision and the resources to bring forgiveness education far and wide. Question for those who are listening: The next time a city wishes to build a $250 million complex for athletics or entertainment or whatever, who has the persuasive skills and accompanying wisdom and courage to ask that one half of one percent of that be siphoned off to forgiveness education? If we could go back and ask the deceased students in Ohio or the innocent 4-year-old what is the higher priority….what do you think they would say to us?
Society, what do you think?
Robert
