some thoughts on forgiveness
Mar. 5th, 2006 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theladyroseI saw this question on a community today: How do you forgive without giving in?
I'm curious as to how others would respond.
I'm not quite sure what "not giving in" means. I am very much of the forgive and forget school; we have all made mistakes, and who are we to say that someone else is in the wrong and we are totally absolved ourselves? There are many little things that I do that probably annoy/disappoint/frustrate others, but people don't hold those against me, or at least to my knowledge. So why should I begrudge others?
I don't see the point in wasting one's feelings on being angry and hurt; life is short enough, so why not spend as much of that time as possible being happy and making others happy? I think society spends too much time wondering where others went wrong; what I prefer to focus on is what I can do to avoid future situations that are harmful for everyone. To quote John F. Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." In many cases I think it's very tempting for people to shove responsabilities for their own failures on others instead of finding ways to correct the root of the problem in their own behavior.
To be honest I am rather naive, and I'm sure there's great potential for people to take advantage of me in the future. I'm lucky that hasn't happened to me yet. I don't mean to present myself as a paragon of moral superiority, either; no one has ever caused me to truly suffer as a result of his/her actions. I have never been a victim of cruelty where forgiveness would be much more difficult to grant. I just try to avoid hurting others, and I like to think that I'm doing a decent job. I find it it extremely difficult to be angry at anyone for longer than ten minutes (and that's long at that; usually my threshold is two minutes) because most of the things that anger me are merely annoying as well as trivial. There's no point in wasting my thoughts and feelings on them; I've got better things to do with my time. Most things are not worth destroying a relationship for. We are all deserving of forgiveness, but self-absolution is not for granted.
I'm curious as to how others would respond.
I'm not quite sure what "not giving in" means. I am very much of the forgive and forget school; we have all made mistakes, and who are we to say that someone else is in the wrong and we are totally absolved ourselves? There are many little things that I do that probably annoy/disappoint/frustrate others, but people don't hold those against me, or at least to my knowledge. So why should I begrudge others?
I don't see the point in wasting one's feelings on being angry and hurt; life is short enough, so why not spend as much of that time as possible being happy and making others happy? I think society spends too much time wondering where others went wrong; what I prefer to focus on is what I can do to avoid future situations that are harmful for everyone. To quote John F. Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." In many cases I think it's very tempting for people to shove responsabilities for their own failures on others instead of finding ways to correct the root of the problem in their own behavior.
To be honest I am rather naive, and I'm sure there's great potential for people to take advantage of me in the future. I'm lucky that hasn't happened to me yet. I don't mean to present myself as a paragon of moral superiority, either; no one has ever caused me to truly suffer as a result of his/her actions. I have never been a victim of cruelty where forgiveness would be much more difficult to grant. I just try to avoid hurting others, and I like to think that I'm doing a decent job. I find it it extremely difficult to be angry at anyone for longer than ten minutes (and that's long at that; usually my threshold is two minutes) because most of the things that anger me are merely annoying as well as trivial. There's no point in wasting my thoughts and feelings on them; I've got better things to do with my time. Most things are not worth destroying a relationship for. We are all deserving of forgiveness, but self-absolution is not for granted.
