Tagged: “New Ideas”

Checking in Again Regarding Your Unfolding Love Story

In March of 2014, we posted a reflection here in which we encouraged you to grow in love as your legacy of 2014.

The challenge was this: Give love away as your legacy of 2014.

We challenged you again in 2015…..and 2016……and we kept going.

Our challenge to you now is this: Give love away as your legacy of 2019.

One way to start is by looking backward at one incident of 2019 so far. Please think of one incident with one person in which you were loved unconditionally, perhaps even surprised by a partner or a parent or a caring colleague.

Think of your reaction when you felt love coming from the other and you felt love in your heart and the other saw it in your eyes. What was said? How were you affirmed for whom you are, not necessarily for something you did? What was the other’s heart like, and yours?

Can you list some specific, concrete ways in which you have chosen love over indifference? Love over annoyance? If so, what are those specifics and how are they loving? We ask because 2019 will be 50% over as we move through June. Have you engaged in 50% of all the loving responses that you will leave in this world this year?

Tempus fugit. If you have not yet deliberately left love in the world this year, there is time…..and the clock is ticking.

Robert

Despite your response to a question on April 30 in this column, I can cite a variety of cases where the one extending mercy was indeed “higher” than the one receiving that mercy. Can you further explain your contention?

Yes, there are many examples of one person as “higher” than another in mercy, such as a judge reducing a deserved sentence of a person who is convicted of a crime.  Yet, mercy in general is going beyond what is deserved to aid someone who is suffering.  Such aid need not imply, in every case, that the one who is exercising mercy is somehow higher than the other. 

Here is an example: Let us suppose that a judge just got into an auto accident.  The judge is hurt and needs help.  Now, here comes a driver, who is a convicted person on probation.  The convicted person is late for work, under pressure, but nonetheless stops his car to aid the judge.  This is costing the convicted person who now is going beyond fairness (after all, he could simply call 911 and move on) to help the judge, who is supposedly the “higher” person. 

So, mercy is not always a moral virtue in which the “higher” person aids a lower person.  If you think about it, by our use of the word “higher” in these examples, it always involves not some kind of spiritually higher situation, but instead only a social role situation.  If we look beyond social roles, no one is higher than anyone else.  Thus, mercy is the attempt to alleviate the suffering of another, regardless of social role.

Learn more at What is Forgiveness?

Celebrate Spring with a Free Gift–or Two–from Us!

I am newly married and my wife seems to have some suppressed anger from her childhood. Here is what I mean. At first, she talked about how idyllic her childhood was. Yet, over time, she has begun to develop nightmares about some of her interactions with her parents. These are not just nighttime fantasies because, as she looks back now, she is seeing some ignoring by the parents and putting-her-as-second best within her family of origin. What do you suggest?

In my book, The Forgiving Life, I recommend an exercise that I call the Forgiveness Landscape in which you begin to think about all of the people who have ever been unjust to you. You rate what the injustice is and how deeply that injustice hurt you. You then order these people from the least-severe hurt to the most-severe hurt. You start with the least-severe hurt and begin the forgiveness process with that person. Once you finish the forgiveness process with that one person, you move up to the next person, and then the next until you are experienced enough with forgiveness to start forgiving those who have been the most hurtful to you. This exercise may prove worthwhile for your wife. In other words, she does not start with the parents. As she forgives others, who are less hurtful to her, then her psychological defenses toward her parents, in which she may have been denying the degree of hurt, may change so that she sees the deeper hurt that she has. At that point, she may have the strength, the resolve, and the expertise to forgive the parents. At that point, the nightmares may end. I wish both of you the best on this forgiveness journey.

For additional information, see: How to Forgive.
To order Dr. Enright’s book, see: The Forgiving Life.

How can I introduce forgiveness into my own family. I am a mother of three children, ages 6, 8, and 11.

We have forgiveness education curriculum guides here at the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc. for children age 4 all the way up to adolescents ages 17 to 18. We help children and adolescents first understand forgiveness through stories, which are part of these curricula. You might consider once a week having a “Forgiveness Hour” in which you use the lessons from our curriculum guides. You also might consider even a 15 minute Family Forgiveness Forum once a week in which you discuss your own themes of forgiveness that week: How you are working on forgiving, what you are doing concretely to forgive, and how this is going for you.

For additional information, see: Forgiveness Makes Kids Happier.