Forgiveness and its fallacies.

 

We can barely speak, never mind understand, what it means when we are taught that prayer. We memorise and recite it with the kind of enthusiasm that is untainted by understanding. Small mouths forming big words. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us” we say. Pleading to a supposedly all-knowing god who is said to know us before we formed in our mother’s womb. Quite the thing to plead for while simultaneously claiming it as a habit of our own.

There is all kinds of advice and “wisdom” on forgiveness and why we should give it to ourselves and others. It is said to free us from the weight of carrying our hurt. To help us preserve our relationships with each other by not letting mistakes tear down what we have built. To remind us that we too are capable of harm and will inevitably be in need of the same gift we are encouraged to give.

I’ve been asking myself questions about forgiveness and what it is that I intend and do not intend to do when and if I give or ask for it. It is important that I make it clear that to me forgiveness is not compulsory, as with all other things concerning my life, it is strictly at my discretion. I am also shameless about the fact that I quite like grudges and have known them to serve me well at times. They have helped keep distance where it was necessary and where habit or fear could have made me retain proximity. They have sobered my delusions about the intentions of others before any further cruel actions were taken. They have discouraged my own cruel actions towards others. I know both their venom and their power and sometimes I do not care which one I get to harness through my choice to hold them.

 I think part of my being drawn to grudges is that they allow me an opportunity to not chase the self-righteousness I often find in people who do consider forgiveness compulsory. In my experience, those people also often consider themselves to be morally superior for both their ability or choice to forgive as well as the time it takes for them to do so. I do not have the same sensibilities and I am neither quick to grant nor ask for forgiveness especially on matters of principle. I am under no pressure to prove to self or others that I am the better person nor to move swiftly passed the weight of my anger and disappointment or my guilt and shame. I let them play out for as long as necessary to learn what I need to from those emotions.  

In the long list of ways we are continuing to decline as people in this modern age is the prioritisation of how things appear over what they are. As if all things can be captured in a quick snap and consumed instead of actually experienced in their fullness and complexity. Virtue signalling becomes normal even though options like truth or silence exist. I have forgiven before, as truthfully as I could and I have withheld forgiveness in exchange for nothing or for a grudge. Most of the time, I land somewhere in the middle where I have neither given nor withheld forgiveness. I take my time there and get acquainted to what will eventually be a decision.

It is my belief that the middle need not be rushed nor discounted. Real work happens in the middle, right where nothing is certain or clear. When I can allow myself to think about what it is that that I am actually scorned by or understand the weight of my wrongdoing, is when I find actual refinement of character takes places. When I learn what is it that I do not want to be versus what I do want to be as a result of what I have done or what has been done to me. Not at the declaration or performance of forgiveness.