Forgiveness: Easy or Difficult?


Is forgiveness inner-directed or other-directed?

I agree with you, Marilyn, that the degree to which I am hurt or harmed has a lot to do with the relative ease or difficulty with which I move toward forgiveness. Yet in the process of closely examining my own experience of becoming a more forgiving person, the degree to which I find it easy or difficult to let go of blame depends in part where I allocate what psychologists call "the locus of control," i.e., whether I attribute the cause of my unforgiving feelings to be external or internal.

Insofar as the operative aspect of unforgiveness is blame, it is other-directed. Insofar as the operative aspect of forgiveness is the release of blame, it is inner-directed. Blame is much harder to release for other directed persons. Inner-directed persons tend to move toward forgiveness with far less difficulty.

While this observation does not really answer the question of whether forgiveness is easy or difficult, it goes a long way toward explaing why the question exists.




Empathy and locus of control

In light of my response to Marilyn's post immediately above, you have sparked two further questions in me, Greg:

Is there a relationship between one's inclination toward empathy and one's perceived locus of control? And if so, what is the differential that distinguishes the relationship.

Furthermore, does the "hardness" of the forgiveness process have a different quality for other-directed persons than it does for inner-directed persons? And again, if so, what is the differential?



Viewing from another's shoes

Coincidentally, a recent post by Ann Tousignant in the thread "Forgiveness Techniques" (Discussion Questions for Week 3) addresses your further questioning here. She describes an approach that essentially amounts to vicariously experiencing "how the shoe fits" (and where it pinches) the other person while making the same assessment for onseself.

I can relate to the guitarist metaphor, since I have forgiven my inability to play one of my all-time favorite guitar virtuoso pieces, "Recuerdos de l'Alhambra," or to play like like Les Paul, Chet Atkins, or Django Reinhardt. My inability to do so is related to a less-than-optimum degree of fine motor co-ordination, which places all such accomplishment beyond my grasp no matter how hard I might endeavor to reach.

I do not, however, equate forgiveness with concepts of finite measurement. What I expereince as finite is not a threshold on my ability to forgive, rather a threshold on my willingness to forgive. Accordingly, I truly believe that there is nothing I cannot forgive, only things that I am unwilling to forgive.

Nor do I experience forgiveness as a skill, I rather experience it as an attitude. My skills are physically finite, while my attitudes are infinitely expandable, adaptable and applicable.

[Just for the record, I forgave my lack of fine motor coordination when I learned (in High School) that, because of it, I would never be as adept in sports as those who are thus graced. Paradoxically, my recognition of this limitation relieved me from my negative feelings of limitation.

Insofar as it has also limited by prowess on guitar and keyboards, the way I go about covering and recovering from my relatively frequent mistakes while playing has developed into a unique style that no one else can readily imitate. Instead of despairing (holding a grudge against myself) I have forgivingly embraced my fine motor limitations by calling my musical style "dropstitch". In other words, I choose to be positively limited rather than negatively so, which is one of the many forms that forgiveness takes.]


Re:Unwilling vs incabable

Just as death is instantaeous when it finally comes, while dying may take weeks, months, or years, so (in my experience) is forgiveness instantaneous while getting to it may take weeks, months, or years. 

Like every other attitude, forgiveness is cultivated. Therefore, the more forgiveNESS I accomplish, the more forgivING I become attitudinally. 

Insofar as forgiveness is attitudinal, it is a state of consciousness, and states of consciousness can (with practice) be accessed by choice. The practice may seem mechanical or otherwise artificial, until the result is obtained.

I once had a friend who could go to sleep in ten seconds when he chose to. When I asked him how he did it, he said, "I just remember what it's like to be asleep, and I am." 

Similarly, I am learning to be more forgiving by remembering what it is like to be so. I am sometimes amazed by the power of willingness to overcome capability.


Forgiving what cannot be forgotten

In my own experience of remembering hurtful occasions in the past, Wendie, my ability to recall something that is not or cannot be forgotten, without feeling the pain that was formerly attached to the memory, is the essence of what it means to forgive the unforgettable.


The hook of unforgiveness

Thank you, Wendie, for the distinction between the pardoning, resignation, and condoning that some folks erroneously associate with forgiveness, and true forgiveness that leads to releasing blame while otherwise holding others responsible and accountable for any hurtful and harmful consequences of their actions. Most pardoning of, resigning myself to, and condoning of actions that have violated me (or continue to do so) tends merely to cover over rather than release my resulting resentment. The only pardon that construes forgiveness is pardoning that mends a situation for all concerned.

You have reftramed and then partially answered the question of why forgiveness seems to be difficult. It feels difficult insofar as unhooking myself from blame consists of my coming to the realization that what ultimately requires my forgiveness is my perception that forgiveness is required. 

So the more precisely focused question is the one you've closed with, namely, why is it so hard to let myself off the hook?

The answer to the forgiveness question thus asked tends to be more simple than it is easy. In my experience, easement of unforgiveness's dis-ease begins with a sincere and clear acknowledgement to myself that it is I who created the hook, and I who continue to keep myself hooked. It's the necessity of such candor with myself that makes forgiving seem so formidable. It's so much easier to hang out on the hook of blame in what physicists call "the inertia of rest" than it is to initiate inertial change.


On being the only one

Yes, Thomas, being "the only one" is the burden of all our proof. 

As Ronald Laing put it, in his book, The Politics of Experience:

"We can see other people's behavior, but not their experience.... The other person's behavior is an experience of mine. My behavior is an experience of the other.... I see you and you see me. I experience you and you experience me. I see your behavior. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me. Just as you cannot see my experience of you... Your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.

"I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible beings. All beings are invisible to one another. Experience is being's invisibility to being. Experience used to be called the Soul. Experience as invisibility of being to being is at the same time more evident than anything. Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence."

There's a heap of forgiveness inherent in Laing's realization, especially for those who still relate to their experience as their soul.



The other half of the forgiveness equation

In addition, Thomas, to assimilating Wendie's insights on forgiving those who know not what they do, you are possibly faced with the equal if not greater challenge of forgiving those who do not what they know. 

Underlying every so-called "sin" of commission, there lies a "sin" of omission, and the omission is often harder to face than the commission. Dr. Luskin touches on this with his insights on unmet expectations: where there is no expectation, there can be no sin of commision. 

For instance, if I don't expect someone to act and be a certain way, their not acting or being that way causes me no grievance. When I do have an expectation, it is the omission of meeting it that tends to grieve me most, not the commission of what has failed to meet it.

Does any of this shed light on the dynamics of your emotional turbulence?



Embracing ambiguity

You bring to mind one of my favorite definitions of forgiveness:

Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better or different past.

You are also keeping me aware of how ambiguous our study of forgiveness tends to be - or the study of any psychological process for that matter. 

For instance, running a red light is equally an act of omission and commision depending on the perspective from which it is viewed, just every act is ultimately multi-perceivable in accordance with all possible alternative perspectives thereupon.