Forgiveness or Forgetting

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. 

Offer me money. Offer me power. Offer me everything I ask for!

I want my father back, you son of a bitch

I am plagued by heartbreak over a family member’s perceived mistake towards me. The road to forgiveness for that is not easy. Forgetting is a stage harder, as for people with good long-term memory, there are so many memories that stay stuck in my head despite my effort to forget them. That I had overthinking tendencies and extreme mood swings (especially during that time of the month) does not help (but do not worry, I have a doctor-written prescription to help manage them). 

You must have heard that forgiving is for the person doing the forgiving; to let go of anger, of heartbreak, and move on to face reality. To not hold onto the thorny past that still gives us bleeding wounds. To still have it in our mental capacity to accept the person again as part of our life, even if strict boundaries or a certain distance are needed. Forgetting, sometimes, is easier.

So how do people with good memories deal with forgiveness? How do they still carry around the memories of being hurt? How does one detach their emotion from the still-fresh memory of the hurt?

Always take the forgiving route.

There is no way to forget. So, like it or not, anyone with a sliver of good memory cannot help but take the forgiving route. They cannot not think about it, and it will go away on its own before something that reminds them of the hurt comes around, or a trauma response is identified, or they just forget the hurt and injury ever happened. They will always remember what happened, the hurt feelings, and the road to forgiving is a damn cliff. 

As my dear readers might have guessed, I am one of those with a good memory. My mental defence mechanism chooses the highway to hell by keeping exactly every traumatic moment and memory frozen in time so I would know what to look out for—or so I surmised. It did not help that I have that tendency to overplay those memories inside my head, recalling every emotion and hurt. There is simply no ‘forgive and forget’. 

It is a goddamn cliff, and I have no tools to climb upon it besides sharp, jutted-out rocks. 

How do you forgive?

Forgiveness is held as a merciful, unconditional action controlled exclusively by the injured; it is the means by which an injured person breaks the enmeshment of hate/resentment with the injurer (Benson in Sells & Hargrave, 1988, p. 23). It is in the hands of the ‘victim’, so to speak, and does not necessarily mean reconciliation or a surrender to a continued form of injury/abuse. Reconciliation is possible, but not strictly required.

So to forgive is to let go of the hate and resentment toward the injurer. How long could that take? Sometimes long, sometimes short, but I guarantee you I could still recount the important moments of hurt and injury. When I could recall the memories without still feeling hurt—which is much easier done when you do not need to meet the injurer ever again—then I have forgiven. 

But all of that becomes complicated when the parties involved are family members. 

Family Therapy Perspective

In this section, I will summarise and explain the findings of this very perspective in Sells & Hargrave's paper. Hargrave (1994) worked forgiveness into the relational ethics (values) within a family dynamic, in which a subjective balance of justice, morality, entitlement, and obligations is the manager of the relationship (this is, in fact, an oversimplification). 

Subjective justice and morality are self-explanatory; every family has their own do-and-don’ts that determine their shared value. You have entitlement from the obligations family members carry, just as the other family members are entitled to the obligations you do. 

On the road to forgiveness in such a tight relationship, you could either give forgiveness in the form of absolving the injurer from their guilt through your own insight and empathy. Or, you could give them forgiveness through compensation or an open discussion about the hurt caused. 

There is another opinion from Bass and Davis (1994) that is more in alignment with the previous section; to let go of the resentment and anger towards the injurer, without any form of reciprocal relation as described by Hargrave. It lacks the sense of holding the injurer responsible for the hurt they caused, sure. But it also focuses on how you should forgive yourself for being hurt or injured by others, absolving you of any form of self-blame. 

The people who forgive

McCullough (2001) categorised the Forgiving Personality as: more agreeable, more emotionally stable, and (possibly) more spiritual or religious. In the process of forgiving, these people had empathy for the injurer, ‘rated’ their injurer generously, though, of course, it depends on the sort of injury caused. Lastly, they avoid thinking—rumination—about the injury or hurt that had happened. 

Surely that one particular journal is a big generalisation when forgiveness needs a case-by-case review. But that might just be me being defensive, as it seems that I am less agreeable, less emotionally stable, and less spiritual/religious. That is fine. The road to forgiveness is not always as simple as draping silk over the hurt and injury, then forgetting it was ever there, especially not when your memory is good enough you could remember what clothes someone wore in last year’s once-a-blue-moon outing (yes, I’m bragging). 

So when your forgiveness path is a steep cliff with sharp jutting rocks, and you have no tools to climb it, what do you do?

Inigo Montoya

While most of the things above are from journal articles, the Inigo Montoya quote I put above is from a movie, The Princess Bride. Disclaimer: I never watched the movie. That quote from him is too iconic and valuable not to be included in this writing. 

We then take a look at Joanna North’s article (1987), published online in 2009. Kant argued that retribution from suffering a wrongdoing is natural; Hegel said punishment is an act of respect for the wrongdoers (the injurer). They both needed the wrongdoers to undo the injury that had been done. But it is of a different context than compensation. The closest thing I could think of with this philosophy is an eye for an eye. A compensation, in contrast, is a form of reconciliation so that the injured and the injurer can maintain their relationship.

And retribution is exactly what Inigo Montoya did. 

The best path to climb

—is whatever you choose to do for the peace and calm of your heart. If you’re not the type that can sleep well with tangled or tense relationships, whatever their form, then forgiveness towards reconciliation is the most fitting. If, like me, you could not help but be swayed by the loop of memory being hurt, then take your sweet time climbing the cliff of forgiveness. And if you think retribution or punishment is the only way you can be at peace? Why not? (don’t kill anyone though). Forgiveness, no matter what their form, is for your peace and well-being.

That would all be my radical musing in the dead of the night (I write all this at 2 in the morning). I will completely understand if you decide against retribution or punishment for forgiveness; that is, after all, a slippery slope that can turn you into an injurer instead. So before you dole out retribution and punishment, think: can you bear the consequences of being an injurer, a wrongdoer yourself? If it will give your conscience a hard time, then seek other ways to forgive: to release the hurt and heartbreak you felt over the hurt you gained.

May all of our wounds heal kindly.

See you next time. 

References

McCullough, M. E. (2001). Forgiveness: Who Does It and How Do They Do It? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 194-197. 10.1111/1467-8721.00147

North, J. (1987). Wrongdoing and Forgiveness. Philosophy, 62(242), 499-508. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003181910003905X

Sells, J. N., & Hargrave, T. D. (1998, February). Forgiveness: a review of the theoretical and empirical literature. Journal of Family Therapy, (1998)(20), 21-36. 10.1111/1467-6427.00066