I struggle with the word ‘forgiveness’. The implication negates the difficult process by whittling it down to a single word. By doing so, it seems to undermine the power of the process. Some people are easier to forgive than others. Sometimes forgiveness takes a different form, like a misunderstanding with potential for clarification (my favorite kind).
We all have situations in life where the concept of forgiveness can arise. The time or energy seems to vary as greatly as the scenarios themselves, so why is it so difficult to forgive some and not others?
I decided to take a different approach and think about the process as opposed to the situation. Maybe lumping all infractions into the same pile is the emotional equivalent of washing reds with whites-destined for a bleed.
I began by reminding myself that most everything lives on a sliding scale, especially regarding human emotions. To me, one end is not to forgive and the other end is to forgive. Are there benchmarks along the way? Maybe, I will hold space there if I find them to be relevant.
The who, seems to precede the what. Different people hold different roles in my life and I’m not as likely to spend as much time on someone I may not know well, or someone who I have never met. The person who cut me off in traffic, annoying yes, but I also come to expect different infractions on the road. So, do we add a character to this list of people in our lives? Do we forgive strangers? Sure we do, all the time. We swear under our breath and move on.
So it seems, forgiveness lives on multiple scales depending on the relationship. And by defining the relationship, we can then explore the scope of forgiveness.
Continued next week…