On Forgiveness

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One of my goals for this year was to come up with my own personal definition of forgiveness. Growing up, I was very much taught in the school of “forgive and forget.” In short, forgetting and acting as though the offense never occurred was the best way to demonstrate that you had let go of whatever had happened. Needless to say, I found this understanding of forgiveness unsatisfying as a child and still do now.

What is forgiveness? In many ways, it is easier to understand what forgiveness is *not*. Is forgiveness an event? a process? an action towards or a letting go? Most recently, I posed this question to a group of women with whom I was doing a poetry workshop around joy. In our session, their thoughts helped me narrow in on a working definition that I’m currently parsing through.

One person offered the reflection that forgiveness allows a person the ability to “recall but not relive.” That is to say, forgiving does not necessarily imply a wiping of the memory, but it does offer space to process what happened from more of a distance than the place of immediate hurt. The relationship of forgiveness to memory is one of the main sticking places I have with the understanding linking forgiveness to forgetting — for those of us who have long memories, remembering in and of itself does not necessarily mean the memory still causes active pain.

Another person put forth their definition as the ability to not be made small in the circumstances. She defines forgiveness as a solo act of liberation, one in which the memory of what happened does not define you or make you small. This makes me believe that forgiveness is much more of a process than a singular event; it always had felt impossible to me to place a singular moment of forgiveness as a dot on a timeline. Certainly how I feel about past events has shifted over time, but I think of forgiveness as much more of a nonlinear process, a space you come back to over and over.

Someone else offered their understanding of forgiveness as “an act of radical generosity towards those who have harmed you.” I found this definition fascinating; it felt like the most active, tangible definition with a clear step as to what to *do* in order to forgive someone. She called forgiveness a sacred thing, and believes that true forgiveness is therefore rare. Hearing this made me consider the Bible verse about “turning the other cheek” — Matthew 5: 38-40 says the following:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.”

I’m not gonna lie, this understanding of forgiveness always felt very passive to me. Also, the idea of allowing someone who has already caused me harm the room and ability to continue to cause me harm runs up against my self-preservation instincts. I like the idea of forgiveness being an action in the sense of a radical act of generosity, but I remain puzzled as to what that looks like in practice. Should I send a bouquet of flowers to my nasty coworker? I ask in jest, but I haven’t decided yet if the radical action is the act of forgiving itself, or if there is an external action that needs to take place in order for the process to take place.

Others brought up the valid point that forgetting has its place too. For one person, the act of forgetting the harm was an important part of her own self-protection and allowed her to move forward. One person referenced the incredible actions taken by the survivors of the terrorist attack on Mother Emanuel Church AME in Charleston, South Carolina. The day after the shooting, right in the midst of the aftermath of the attack, several members of the congregation put out a public statement saying that they forgave the young white man who orchestrated the attack. It was an incredibly powerful act to take, one with critics of course; I can’t think of a more radical act of generosity than that. And I also don’t know if I have that generosity within me. Acts of racial violence are such that I don’t particularly care to turn the other cheek.

I’m still mulling over these conversations, as well as another one I had with a friend. He challenged me to make the journey towards understanding forgiveness less abstract and academic and more practical. In short, my charge was to find something to forgive someone for, no matter how small, and essentially, use my experience as field notes to see what I understood from it. I am also interested in how the definition may shift when applied internally; is there a different experience with forgiveness when the other party is the self? Does asking forgiveness make a difference? When you forgive others, do you forget about the harm you have caused?

Many of my questions remain unanswered, but I’ll be documenting how my forgiveness experiment goes and see what comes up from there. I’m curious: how do you define forgiveness? What does it mean to you?