Forgiveness or the Irony of Vengeance
June 6th, 2010
In this week’s article, I wanted to continue the theme that I’ve been exploring over the past five weeks in regard to cleaning up the wreckage of our poor choices and behavior, only from the opposite perspective: that of the person who has been wronged (the ‘wreckee’). I was going to begin with a sort of theoretical expose explaining what goes on in the mental, emotional, and spiritual background of someone who sees her- or himself wronged (‘disrespected’ or ‘injured’). Then I saw a comment left on one of my articles (“Writing Out the Pain”) on another of my blogs: Midlife Matters, by a fellow named Richard. You can find his comment here: http://midlifemaster.net/2010/02/writing-out-the-pain/#comment-562. With apologies to Richard, his comments can serve as a powerful example to all of us of the temptations that we all face when dealing with life’s vagaries.
Forgiveness is a skill that requires lifelong study and practice to gain any sort of proficiency at all; and yet it is the one and only skill that will infallibly determine whether we experience our existence as a triumph or a tragedy. Since the emergence of human consciousness, people have gone to incredible lengths to discover the so-called ‘secret of (a happy) life’, yet the ‘secret’ is perfectly simple and perfectly obvious to those who have the spiritual eyes to see it: forgiveness. On the surface, it seems way too simple, like the prophet Elisha telling Na’aman the Syran general to wash in the Jordan to cure his leprosy. Yet developing this one little skill plumbs the very spiritual depths of the person who we think we are.
Over the past few articles, I’ve been exploring the mysterious world of getting your mental, emotional and spiritual house in order through the essential process of reconciliation. I’ve often stated that midlife brings about a deep spiritual transformation in those who allow the process to move forward. It serves as the doorway into the world of maturity which takes us as far beyond adulthood as adulthood once took us away from childhood. Yet, this transformation that brings us an unparalleled measure of both inner strength and serenity is impossible without first cleaning up the wreckage that we’ve created all around us by our mistakes and/or poor judgment. Reconciliation is not optional for anyone who desires to grow and develop.
“Insanity,” said Albert Einstein, “is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results.” That quote has been so frequently quoted in the recent past that it rivals the popularity of anything that Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac has to offer. What’s more, like Franklin’s aphorisms, this one is based in solid fact. If nothing changes, nothing changes. When you’ve made a mess, apologizing for it and even making amends for it means very little if you’re unwilling to do make the effort to change the root causes that led you to create the mess in the first place. This is one infallible piece of evidence that will allow you to distinguish a genuine apology from mere face-saving (or, even worse, mere posturing): How far is the apologist prepared to go to do things differently from now on?
A relationship is a living thing. Every one of them requires nurturing and protection, otherwise it may all too easily become injured, sicken, weaken, and even die; and, for us human beings, relationships are not optional: they literally make up the fabric of our very being. Scientists discovered a long time ago that infants who were not touched and held, although otherwise healthy and strong, would before long wither and die. We cannot live without relationships anymore than we could live in a two-dimensional world. Life without depth would be meaningless. Even hermits, who go off to live their lives in seeming isolation from ‘the world,’ speak of how they intentionally and virtually bring the whole world with them into their hermitage. Though isolated, they are not alone.
Do you find yourself carrying around with you an enormous bag of ‘I’m Sorrys,’ doling them out liberally to everyone you encounter? Many people do, you know. They not only apologize for being in other people’s way, it’s as though they’re apologizing for taking up space in other people’s universe, and breathing other people’s air. Let’s spend a few minutes together looking at what’s going on when we apologize. There are at least four approaches to the art of apology, only one of which is at all effective in helping to clean up the wreckage that bad choices have left behind.
