“The Nuances of Forgiveness”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert
We’ve all heard of the concept of forgiveness. Or maybe we ourselves have even uttered the words,
“I forgive you”
And many spiritual and religious circles encourage forgiving others often stating outright that it is the “holy” or “righteous” or “giving” or “loving” thing to do. It is often made into a somewhat simplistic, almost trite act that “all good people should do.”
They use the idea of forgiveness as if it implies, “I’m ok with the bad stuff you said or did. I’m not angry at you. And I don’t hold a grudge against you for it.”
And then, poof, everything is hunky-dory after that! Everything is fine.
I think it is more complicated and nuanced than that.
Forgiveness and Love
First, let’s define love. Because I think love plays an intimate role in thinking about forgiveness.
“Love” — in the way I remember Jesus defined and exemplified it in his daily life — is “accepting the other person for who they are, not who you wish they were.”
So let’s keep that definition of love, not the Hollywood romanticized definition of love (as some feeling of butterflies in your tummy...which always goes away eventually after the initial newness of the infatuation wears off), as we think about the idea of Forgiveness.
By using this definition of love as acceptance, we can move away from “judging” the other person internally — their motives, their state of mind, their degree of self-awareness, etc. All of which are impossible to accurately discern and determine.
And instead, we can focus on the other person’s external behavior. What they did or said. And how it affected us.
Forgiveness I’m defining as our decision to move on after accepting whatever that behavior by the other person was. We can either choose to move on with the other person or without them. But forgiving means we are moving on — mentally and emotionally — and yes, maybe physically.
Not forgetting what they said or did. Because no one ever forgets.
But moving forward. That is how I’m using the idea of forgiveness here.
Degrees of Forgiveness
Forgiveness as a simple acceptance of “I’m sorry”
Perhaps the simplest form of forgiveness is the one where the other person just slips up in a relatively minor way, maybe even unintentionally — what we used to call when I was a kid an “Oops” or a “boo-boo”...or maybe even a combination as in, “Oops, I made a boo-boo! Sorry about that!”
So then you say simply, “Yeah, no big deal. I forgive ya.” And you both quickly move on.
That’s the easy situation. The least intense. The almost non-thinking dispensing of forgiveness because whatever the other person perceived as “bad” behavior wasn’t even that bad in your mind or maybe was hardly even noticeable by you.
Love in the way we defined it is easy to implement. It’s easy to accept the other person and what they did because it hardly had an impact on us. The forgiveness is more of an acknowledgement of their saying “I’m sorry” than anything else. Our “judgment meter” was barely turned on. The misstep in their behavior was hardly a ripple in the vast goodness of the ocean of our existing relationship.
We forgave them and moved on.
Forgiveness as “I accept what you did as an expression of who you were at that moment, it was bad, and I’m ok with it”
A slightly more intense level of radar assessment on our part gets triggered here.
Whatever they did — maybe they got in our face and criticized us for something they already know we know we need to act on. It’s as if we go, “Ok, we’ve been down this road before, your behavior ticks me off, but I’ve chosen to live with it.”
Why? Because we’ve chosen to love the other person in that way we described (accepting them for who they are, not who we wish they were). And their “bad” behavior is relatively minor and acceptable, as far as our relationship is concerned.
It’s a bit more intense than the first situation because we are ill affected by the behavior and it does bother us, but again, it is more than a slight ripple, maybe like a wave but still relatively minor on the vast ocean of that relationship.
Forgiveness as “I accept what you did as an expression of who you were at that moment and I’m not ok with it”
In this situation, we need to assess both their behavior and how it affects us more deeply. First, as always, we are assessing the other person’s behavior as acceptable or not.
And where that line is varies from person to person. We are not a monolithic human race who all act and react the same to all situations. We are each unique.
Forgiveness is not a blind act. It may be in theory. But it never is in reality.
And the last time I checked, we live in reality. Not in some world of theory.
So, when I forgive you for whatever you did that I assessed as bad (maybe hurtful, or inappropriate in some way), I have a choice. I can choose to stay in the relationship or not.
The reality I need to accept is that if I stay in the relationship, I am continuing to accept the potentiality of more of that same bad behavior. Because as the saying goes, “the leopard does not change his spots.”
In other words, people don’t change overnight. Behavior does not change overnight. It takes a long long time, many years, arguably many lifetimes to change deep-seated personality traits that are the source of our behavior, good and bad.
So by making the choice to stay in the relationship, we are choosing to accept the behavior. Make no mistake about it, we need to be clear in our own minds that we are in fact making that choice. By that very action. Even if we say, “I forgive you.”
Said another way, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that since we had a conversation with the other person about the bad behavior, and since we forgave them, that that mere conversation and dispensing of forgiveness will change their behavior. The change of their behavior has to come from within themselves, not from our persuading them to change. Nor by our forgiveness. Forgiveness frees us up — it does not necessarily change them.
And as we said, behavior takes many years to change.
Forgiveness as “I accept what you did as an expression of who you were at that moment, I’m definitely not ok with it, and
see you later”
In this more intense situation, we have decided that enough is enough. And notwithstanding however many conversations we have had with the other person, we have decided that the level of their bad behavior is such that it is no longer mutually beneficial for us to stay together.
Nevertheless, we can still end the relationship with forgiveness in the way I have suggested here. By moving onward, and going our separate ways. And without anger — because we have accepted them for who they have been (we have not resisted that reality, otherwise that resistance to who they are would have caused us frustration and anger).
So then, even in this most extreme intense situation, we can still move on with forgiveness and love for the other person. We can choose to do so because the relationship is no longer mutually beneficial. We are no longer being nurtured by the other person in our relationship.
Moving on in this way would perhaps be a way to demonstrate not only our respect and love for ourselves — the ultimate in self-love — but also showing our maturity as a soul living with and relating with other souls in our many and varied relationships throughout our lives.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.