Person 1: “I’m sorry.”
Person 2: “No, you are not.”
Person 1: “Yes, I am. I said I am sorry.”
Person 2: “You don’t sound like you’re sorry.”
Person 1: “What do you want me to do?”
Person 2: “I want you to say you are sorry and mean it.”
I think that we can all replay this scenario in our minds frequently in our lifetimes, and more likely than not, we have been on both sides of that fence. We have apologized (Person 1) and the other person really questioned our sincerity. And we have received an apology (Person 2) and really questioned whether it was sincere.
We all start out as babes and progress to toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults. At each step, significant developmental progress must occur for us to be able to advance on to the next level of personal and social growth. Along the way, in a nurturing environment, we are learning to accept love from others and to express that love in return. Along the way, we also learn that people make mistakes. It is natural to get upset when these mistakes affect us personally but if we do not learn how to forgive and move on to the next level, we will get “stuck” in our developmental progress.
Learning how to forgive is not something that occurs just once in your life. It occurs at every step along life’s pathways – infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It also occurs almost daily at each of those steps. The ability of a five-year-old to forgive is very different from a fifty-five-year-old to forgive. However, we all know people that oftentimes seem to be stuck at the five-year-old level. If you get “stuck” at a lower level of developmental forgiveness, you will not be able to accept that we are all fallible and mistakes will be made.
I think that more emphasis needs to be placed on the ability to forgive in the learning process through schools and the ability to master this process through adulthood.1 Morrie Schwartz2 was embarrassed to admit in his final days how his inability to forgive a close friend led to the collapse of a friendship – and for all the wrong reasons. How often have we done similar things?
Many tasks in life can be mastered after some hard work and then are easy to continue – tasks such as riding a bike, programming a VCR (now a DVR!), using a remote control, or driving a car. Forgiveness is not such a task. We must learn to practice forgiveness at many stages – as a child, as an adolescent, as a young adult, as a mature adult, and as a senior citizen.
We should remember that the primary forgiveness skills are probably taught between the ages of 0 and 5. Children, in the first years of life, learn by the behavior of their parents. Children need to see their parents apologizing for their own mistakes and extending forgiveness to others that make mistakes. It is crucial that these lessons be learned early in life. We all need to learn how to do better.
Our ability to accept forgiveness and extend forgiveness depends on our level of maturity at the various life stages. Yet, just because we can do it one day doesn’t mean we can do it the next day. Each time can be just as difficult (or even more difficult) than the last time. Each time we are wronged or do something wrong, there are emotional issues that need to be solved before we can move on to forgiveness. Dealing with these emotional issues (learning how to love and deal with others with sincerity and humility) is the backbone of learning to practice forgiveness.
Because these emotional issues can be so difficult, we have a lot of “soul searching” to be done every time something goes wrong. It is not like an adult hopping on a bike and just riding it like we did as children. I think that practicing forgiveness is akin to learning how to ride a bike anew every time. We have to learn how to pedal and balance our weight like it was the very first time. Since it is not easy, it takes work every time and this is one reason I think a lot of us have difficulty with it. We don’t like to do things over and over, especially if they are tough. But we must – forgiveness is the most important task of our lives.
Why is it so hard for us to ask for forgiveness and extend forgiveness? Why is it so hard for us to accept our humanity, recognizing that we will make significant mistakes that, unfortunately, will purposefully or not purposefully hurt other people? Why is it so difficult for us to accept the fact that some actions of others that hurt us are now in the past and we need to move on to improve our lives and the lives of others?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. Obviously, these very issues get to the root of human nature and interpersonal relationships. We live in an imperfect world, and we need to learn to accept the imperfections that we cannot change and change the imperfections we cannot accept. We tend to make forgiveness conditional. God’s forgiveness of our sins is unconditional. We are responsible for our actions and must accept the consequences of our actions. However, God does not extend forgiveness after some cooling off period – it is immediate. I must admit that I constantly struggle with these issues.
In his excellent book titled The Language of God, Francis Collins (former Director of the National Institutes of Health) talks about his faith journey and his reconciliation of the oft-stated dilemma about faith and science.3 He eloquently argues that Faith in God and faith in science are harmonious and complement each other. Yet his faith journey provides a very trying story that serves to emphasize the importance of forgiveness.
One night, one of his college-age daughters was brutally raped at knife-point. The assailant was never caught. He relates the following after reflection about the incident –
“We may never fully understand the reasons for these painful experiences, but we can begin to accept the idea [because of our faith in God] that there may be such reasons In my case I can see, albeit dimly, that my daughter’s rape was a challenge for me to try to learn the real meaning of forgiveness in a terribly wrenching circumstance. In complete honesty, I am still working on it…[It] was also an opportunity for me to recognize that I could not truly protect my daughters from all pain and suffering; I had to learn to entrust them to God’s loving care, knowing that this provided not an immunization from evil, but a reassurance that their suffering would not be in vain.”
Dr. Collin’s daughter experienced severe pain and suffering. Forgiveness in this set of circumstances must be one of the most difficult acts to perform. It will take time and significant internal energy. Yet faith in God and the life and lessons of Jesus Christ tell us that we must extend forgiveness (eventually) so we can use adversity to better our life and the lives of others.
When it comes to personal and community activities, we need to remember what was in the past is in the past, and we can always go forward in a positive way. Yes, mistakes should be rectified, responsibility should be accepted, and forgiveness should be practiced.
Like our children ask on the highway, “are we there yet?” is an applicable question for our own forgiveness journey. When we are honest, the answer is no, but hopefully progressing every day. We need to remember to forgive ourselves, forgive our neighbors, and move on. We can do it together.
- Albom M. Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson. Doubleday; 1997. 192 pp
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/forgiveness-a-requisite-life-skill/
- Collins F. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Free Press, 2006. 305 pp.