by Jean Roberta
Like many other media-watchers in Canada, I’m confused and disappointed by the verdict in the “sexual-assault” trial of former talk-show host Jian Ghomeshi (formerly of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). He was acquitted due to inconsistencies in the testimony of women who said he choked, hit and restrained them during sexual encounters that started out consensually.
Here are some links which might work if pasted into your browser:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ghomeshi-verdict-judge-neil-macdonald-1.3506958
http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-jian-ghomeshi-verdict-is-in-but-the-story-isnt-over
The most public complainant, actor Lucy De Coutere, apparently sent him some flirtatious messages after the alleged assault, and this only came out in court during cross-examination. Her behaviour does look illogical.
But so does the reported behaviour of an attractive man who seemed to attract hordes of women, yet seemed touchy, self-centred and manipulative at work and at play, according to many witnesses. His claim that he is “into BDSM” has already been debunked by educators on all things kinky. Rule #1: find out who you’re playing with, and ask for consent.
What does all this have to do with forgiveness? When I was as young as Ghomeshi’s dates (he is in his forties, but prefers women in their twenties), I was constantly encouraged to forgive men who seemed pushy, manipulative, or even violent. After all, I was told, when there is conflict between two people, there is always fault on both sides. I was reminded that human beings are only human.
Maybe Lucy De Coutere internalized some form of this advice, so that her responses to unexpected violence were confused and inconsistent.
The other uncomfortable parallel between my previous relationships and Ghomeshi’s messy track record is that I’ve always been attracted to people who claim to be leftist, anti-establishment types who are against every form of oppression and aggression. I came of age during the War in Vietnam, when redneck men in the U.S. wanted to sign up to fight for America, and hip, sensitive men wanted to sneak out of the U.S. to avoid the draft. (Some born-Canadians even wanted to pass for U.S. draft-dodgers to give themselves more cred.)
Ghomeshi was apparently so far to the left in his student days that he was highly visible in campus feminist groups. I’ve met men like this, and they always made me uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t clearly explain when I was younger. In some cases, they started conversations with, “Well, if women really want equality . . .” They were the experts in other people’s experience as well as their own.
Whenever a leftist man or woman lets me down (as they have done with shocking regularity), I’ve been advised to stop blaming him/her/them. I am either supposed to believe that a socially-conscious platform trumps abusive behaviour or that whenever I become disillusioned with someone in my life, that is a sign of what is wrong with me.
The problem with being opposed to the currently unjust and unsustainable state of the world is that simply being opposed to THIS mess really isn’t a sign that one wouldn’t create a different but equally messy mess, given the chance.
I’ve been urged to attend workshops on forgiveness. Wouldn’t I like to let go of whatever old grudges I’m still holding onto? Wouldn’t I like to achieve a zen state of peace, tranquility, and acceptance of everything? Not really.
I’m a fan of forgiveness AFTER the harm has stopped and after the perpetrator has done everything possible to make amends. If someone stole something from me and then gave it back, with an apology, I would be happy to let bygones be bygones. (Note on this point: when my first woman lover stole the contents of my bank account, approximately $1600, she defended herself by telling me that her parish priest had promised her God’s forgiveness. I promised her my own forgiveness if and when I had been paid back. She never returned the money, and for years, she advised me to forget our little misunderstanding.)
Spouse and I have a bisexual friend who wants to travel with us in the winter of 2017, when I will be on sabbatical. (However, I will be paid 80% of my regular salary, so I won’t have unlimited wealth.) This prospect makes me increasingly uneasy because of the way she drove us out of a local queer organization in the 1990s. I have noticed her long-term pattern of being overly generous, a wannabe salon hostess of the queer community, who seems to need unquestioning agreement in return. She has a fluent vocabulary of psychobabble. For some reason, she now treats Spouse and me like friends, but I’m fairly sure that for about 20 years, she warned others to avoid us.
I am tempted to express my concerns to this person in a public place before making any agreement to go anywhere with her, but I can easily guess the response: why am I so obsessed with the past? (And besides, I misinterpreted everything she did.) Why can’t I let it go? My distrust is so unhealthy!
Spouse didn’t seem to remember our old conflict with “Friend” until I spelled it out for Spouse in detail. In situations like this, I sometimes wonder if I do have an uncanny memory for minor offenses, little dents that other people have accidentally put into the vehicle of my life.
Be that as it may, if “forgiveness” means deciding to trust someone who has shown herself/himself untrustworthy in the past, I can’t do it.
If “forgiveness” only means not hiring a hit person to track down all my enemies, I can resist the temptation to do that. I can be gracious enough not to carry a concealed weapon in my boot or my bra. I can even tune out fantasies of inflicting medieval torture on a deserving victim and justifying it as a spiritual duty. I try not to be a hypocrite.
However, as long as “forgiveness” (without that other thing that is often dangled in front of unhappy people, “closure”) is recommended, over and over again, as the appropriate response to every offense, I can’t buy it. This may be my fatal flaw. I can move on, but I can’t simply clean up the screen of my mind by deleting everything negative until there is nothing left but greeting-card slogans.
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Friday, March 25, 2016
Thursday, March 24, 2016
The Scent of the Violet
by Annabeth Leong
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
The quote above has saved me from a trip through what I often find to be insufferable and pedantic territory.
While forgiveness is beautiful and important, I’m very concerned by all the self-righteousness around the concept that I come across in my general reading and living of life. I think it’s an act of grace and mystery, and by its very nature it’s about going beyond what’s required. So what bothers me is what I see as intense peer pressure, particularly in communities focused around self-help, religion, or other similar pursuits, to forgive people in all circumstances, sometimes far more rapidly than seems reasonable to me. This is often accompanied by a slew of platitudes about forgiveness, why it’s important, and how it works.
Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is that mainstream culture isn’t monolithic, so problems in it often come in pairs. This can make it confusing to criticize mainstream trends without sounding like you’re taking up the other common side. For example, with respect to forgiveness, there’s another mainstream thread of implacable and vengeful anger. See, for example, the various horrific things that U.S. Republican presidential candidates are saying about the vengeance they wish to take in response to terrorist attacks (which often describe acts that would harm many innocent people). I don’t endorse that at all.
To me, this sort of vengeful anger seems like the flip side of pressure to offer kneejerk forgiveness. Both stem from a lack of understanding of forgiveness as a process, and beyond that of the reaction to violence as a set of complex feelings. The mainstream view toward the aftermath of harm looks to me like a binary switch: be vengefully angry forever, or forgive immediately. In my life, probably unsurprisingly to those who know me here, things are far more complicated than that.
I’ll focus on the forgiveness side because that’s our topic.
It’s been complicated for me to get at what forgiveness actually means. At times, I’ve treated it as a thing that totally wipes away whatever wrong was done, in such a way that I placed myself in situations where I was harmed over and over again in the same ways by the same people. At times, the concept of forgiveness (which I might describe now as formally releasing someone, either in your own heart or through conversation, from an obligation to somehow “make it up to you”) gets mixed up with the concept of erasing your anger. I think it’s possible to forgive someone but still feel angry about what was done, and that in many ways that might be a healthier view of what forgiveness could look like. At times, I’ve felt pressured to tell someone I forgave them, particularly in the immediate aftermath of an event, and then found later that I was still suffering from what they had done. At that point, it felt like I’d be making myself a liar if I brought the issue up again.
I’m really concerned about pressure to forgive, for example, ongoingly abusive family members, especially depending on how forgiveness is being defined. If forgiveness means mentally releasing them from some sort of perceived obligation to change but feeling okay about avoiding them forever, then that seems okay to me. If, on the other hand, it means showing up at Thanksgiving and going through more abuse, I’ve got some questions about whether this is really a good idea.
Most importantly, though, for forgiveness to preserve its essential grace, it can’t be obligatory and it can’t be flippant. It needs to be seen as the act of unnecessary generosity that it is. It needs to be seen as the product of time and self-reflection. It needs to be seen as something that can’t necessarily be performed on command. It’s also not easy, and it may not necessarily make things right in any obvious way.
This brings me back to the quote. Though often attributed to Mark Twain, it’s apparently actually of unknown origin.
What struck me, though, is that it preserves the complexity of forgiveness. It’s a lovely image, full of the sort of grace and mystery that the concept of forgiveness possesses to me. It also raises a lot of questions, and doesn’t shy away from the disturbing elements involved.
The flower in the quote has been crushed. There’s no question being raised about whether real harm was done (another issue that often muddies forgiveness—”no harm done” is, I think, a different circumstance). The flower has been crushed and will go on as such. There is no evidence that the foot that crushed it paused, tried to help, or even noticed. It is possible that no amends can be made, and that the crushing is irrevocable. And yet, there is that beautiful fragrance.
But what is that fragrance for? Aside from the beauty and mystery it possesses, it may well go unappreciated. The owner of the heel may never notice the scent. Releasing a lovely scent may do nothing for the flower. And yet it’s undeniable that there is something better about a world in which this image exists.
That last paragraph is really important to me because it counteracts what can be a frustratingly utilitarian view of forgiveness. Accompanying the pressure to provide it rapidly is often the idea that it’s “good for you.” As if it were a way of eating one’s spinach. It is often true that forgiveness, offered sincerely after time and self-reflection, provides a sense of spiritual release, and that it may ultimately be better for one’s psyche than nursing a longstanding grudge. On the other hand, that “good for you” idea feels far too simplistic to me.
If forgiveness is an act of generosity, which I think it is, then focusing on oneself while offering it seems to come at it from the wrong angle. And, as I’ve brought up before, I don’t think forgiveness is good for you if it leads you to continue suffering harm (for example, by forgiving an abusive current partner and then deciding for that reason to stay in the relationship). I’d rather take “good for you” concepts as side effects rather than essential motivation for the act.
The flower may die. It may be crushed again. And yet the scent remains. There’s something lovely and hard to grasp about that, and that gets at the essential nature of forgiveness as I see it.
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
The quote above has saved me from a trip through what I often find to be insufferable and pedantic territory.
While forgiveness is beautiful and important, I’m very concerned by all the self-righteousness around the concept that I come across in my general reading and living of life. I think it’s an act of grace and mystery, and by its very nature it’s about going beyond what’s required. So what bothers me is what I see as intense peer pressure, particularly in communities focused around self-help, religion, or other similar pursuits, to forgive people in all circumstances, sometimes far more rapidly than seems reasonable to me. This is often accompanied by a slew of platitudes about forgiveness, why it’s important, and how it works.
Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is that mainstream culture isn’t monolithic, so problems in it often come in pairs. This can make it confusing to criticize mainstream trends without sounding like you’re taking up the other common side. For example, with respect to forgiveness, there’s another mainstream thread of implacable and vengeful anger. See, for example, the various horrific things that U.S. Republican presidential candidates are saying about the vengeance they wish to take in response to terrorist attacks (which often describe acts that would harm many innocent people). I don’t endorse that at all.
To me, this sort of vengeful anger seems like the flip side of pressure to offer kneejerk forgiveness. Both stem from a lack of understanding of forgiveness as a process, and beyond that of the reaction to violence as a set of complex feelings. The mainstream view toward the aftermath of harm looks to me like a binary switch: be vengefully angry forever, or forgive immediately. In my life, probably unsurprisingly to those who know me here, things are far more complicated than that.
I’ll focus on the forgiveness side because that’s our topic.
It’s been complicated for me to get at what forgiveness actually means. At times, I’ve treated it as a thing that totally wipes away whatever wrong was done, in such a way that I placed myself in situations where I was harmed over and over again in the same ways by the same people. At times, the concept of forgiveness (which I might describe now as formally releasing someone, either in your own heart or through conversation, from an obligation to somehow “make it up to you”) gets mixed up with the concept of erasing your anger. I think it’s possible to forgive someone but still feel angry about what was done, and that in many ways that might be a healthier view of what forgiveness could look like. At times, I’ve felt pressured to tell someone I forgave them, particularly in the immediate aftermath of an event, and then found later that I was still suffering from what they had done. At that point, it felt like I’d be making myself a liar if I brought the issue up again.
I’m really concerned about pressure to forgive, for example, ongoingly abusive family members, especially depending on how forgiveness is being defined. If forgiveness means mentally releasing them from some sort of perceived obligation to change but feeling okay about avoiding them forever, then that seems okay to me. If, on the other hand, it means showing up at Thanksgiving and going through more abuse, I’ve got some questions about whether this is really a good idea.
Most importantly, though, for forgiveness to preserve its essential grace, it can’t be obligatory and it can’t be flippant. It needs to be seen as the act of unnecessary generosity that it is. It needs to be seen as the product of time and self-reflection. It needs to be seen as something that can’t necessarily be performed on command. It’s also not easy, and it may not necessarily make things right in any obvious way.
This brings me back to the quote. Though often attributed to Mark Twain, it’s apparently actually of unknown origin.
What struck me, though, is that it preserves the complexity of forgiveness. It’s a lovely image, full of the sort of grace and mystery that the concept of forgiveness possesses to me. It also raises a lot of questions, and doesn’t shy away from the disturbing elements involved.
The flower in the quote has been crushed. There’s no question being raised about whether real harm was done (another issue that often muddies forgiveness—”no harm done” is, I think, a different circumstance). The flower has been crushed and will go on as such. There is no evidence that the foot that crushed it paused, tried to help, or even noticed. It is possible that no amends can be made, and that the crushing is irrevocable. And yet, there is that beautiful fragrance.
But what is that fragrance for? Aside from the beauty and mystery it possesses, it may well go unappreciated. The owner of the heel may never notice the scent. Releasing a lovely scent may do nothing for the flower. And yet it’s undeniable that there is something better about a world in which this image exists.
That last paragraph is really important to me because it counteracts what can be a frustratingly utilitarian view of forgiveness. Accompanying the pressure to provide it rapidly is often the idea that it’s “good for you.” As if it were a way of eating one’s spinach. It is often true that forgiveness, offered sincerely after time and self-reflection, provides a sense of spiritual release, and that it may ultimately be better for one’s psyche than nursing a longstanding grudge. On the other hand, that “good for you” idea feels far too simplistic to me.
If forgiveness is an act of generosity, which I think it is, then focusing on oneself while offering it seems to come at it from the wrong angle. And, as I’ve brought up before, I don’t think forgiveness is good for you if it leads you to continue suffering harm (for example, by forgiving an abusive current partner and then deciding for that reason to stay in the relationship). I’d rather take “good for you” concepts as side effects rather than essential motivation for the act.
The flower may die. It may be crushed again. And yet the scent remains. There’s something lovely and hard to grasp about that, and that gets at the essential nature of forgiveness as I see it.
Monday, March 21, 2016
The Quality of Mercy
Sacchi Green
When you can’t seem to get a grasp on a topic that really deserves to be considered seriously and in depth, who can you turn to?
Shakespeare, of course. By way of Merriam-Webster:
Simple Definition of forgive
: to stop feeling anger toward (someone who has done something wrong) : to stop blaming (someone)
: to stop feeling anger about (something) : to forgive someone for (something wrong)
: to stop requiring payment of (money that is owed)
You know where I’m going with this, and you know I’m stretching a point to equate forgiveness with mercy, but not stretching all that far. The Merchant of Venice is very much about forgiving a payment, that “pound of flesh” that was put up as collateral for a loan, but it’s about other kinds of forgiveness as well, and about a mercy that includes forgiveness.
Shylock, the Jew who has made the loan, is both villain and victim. He has suffered massive amounts of bigotry and scorn and ill-treatment, some of it at the hands of Antonio, who has been granted the loan to help out a friend. We can understand why Shylock can’t forgive the treatment he and his people have suffered, and Shakespeare even makes us understand how being unable to forgive hurts those who bear a rightful grudge. (I should note here that there are many conflicting interpretations of the various aspects of this play, so I’m choosing an interpretation that fits my needs, while admitting that I am in no way an expert at this.)
I’ll also admit that my main interest in the play has always been the fact that the most impressive character is a woman, Portia, masquerading as a male lawyer to plead Antonio’s case. And what a plea it is!
"The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there."
Shylock is, of course, unmoved by this, so the presiding Duke rules that his price must be paid…until Portia, as lawyer, says okay, take your pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood, or your lands and goods will be forfeited under Venetian laws. In fact threatening to take a citizen’s life leaves Shylock, as an “alien,” subject to loss of property and possibly even his life. The Duke, possibly influenced by Portia’s speech, pardons Shylock’s life, and Antonio agrees to let the property go eventually to Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who has married a Christian Venetian greatly against her father’s wishes. There's some level of forgiveness all around, except that Shylock is unlikely to be any less bitter.
I’ve read Portia’s speech several times, and memorized the first half-dozen lines when I was a teenager, but this time I paid more attention to the later parts, and was struck by the references to mankind’s need for mercy and forgiveness from God, which should lead us to show mercy and forgiveness to each other. Which of course echoes the lines from the Biblical Lord’s Prayer I learned as a child; “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There it is. Forgiveness is essential for us, in the giving as well as the giving. (My own thoughts on the concepts of sin and guilt could lead me widely astray here, but for now let’s just leave it at that.)
Wait a minute, though. We’re erotica writers. Shouldn’t I feel guilty quoting from the Bible here? Will you forgive me if I quote just a bit more from the work that surpasses even Shakespeare as a source of inspiring quotations? How about the Old Testament book The Song of Solomon? Just one lovely erotic verse among many:
“My beloved is mine, and I am his;
he grazes among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
or a young stag on cleft mountains.“
Excuse me. I’ll be in my tent, not feeling at all in need of forgiveness just at the moment.
When you can’t seem to get a grasp on a topic that really deserves to be considered seriously and in depth, who can you turn to?
Shakespeare, of course. By way of Merriam-Webster:
Simple Definition of forgive
: to stop feeling anger toward (someone who has done something wrong) : to stop blaming (someone)
: to stop feeling anger about (something) : to forgive someone for (something wrong)
: to stop requiring payment of (money that is owed)
You know where I’m going with this, and you know I’m stretching a point to equate forgiveness with mercy, but not stretching all that far. The Merchant of Venice is very much about forgiving a payment, that “pound of flesh” that was put up as collateral for a loan, but it’s about other kinds of forgiveness as well, and about a mercy that includes forgiveness.
Shylock, the Jew who has made the loan, is both villain and victim. He has suffered massive amounts of bigotry and scorn and ill-treatment, some of it at the hands of Antonio, who has been granted the loan to help out a friend. We can understand why Shylock can’t forgive the treatment he and his people have suffered, and Shakespeare even makes us understand how being unable to forgive hurts those who bear a rightful grudge. (I should note here that there are many conflicting interpretations of the various aspects of this play, so I’m choosing an interpretation that fits my needs, while admitting that I am in no way an expert at this.)
I’ll also admit that my main interest in the play has always been the fact that the most impressive character is a woman, Portia, masquerading as a male lawyer to plead Antonio’s case. And what a plea it is!
"The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there."
Shylock is, of course, unmoved by this, so the presiding Duke rules that his price must be paid…until Portia, as lawyer, says okay, take your pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood, or your lands and goods will be forfeited under Venetian laws. In fact threatening to take a citizen’s life leaves Shylock, as an “alien,” subject to loss of property and possibly even his life. The Duke, possibly influenced by Portia’s speech, pardons Shylock’s life, and Antonio agrees to let the property go eventually to Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who has married a Christian Venetian greatly against her father’s wishes. There's some level of forgiveness all around, except that Shylock is unlikely to be any less bitter.
I’ve read Portia’s speech several times, and memorized the first half-dozen lines when I was a teenager, but this time I paid more attention to the later parts, and was struck by the references to mankind’s need for mercy and forgiveness from God, which should lead us to show mercy and forgiveness to each other. Which of course echoes the lines from the Biblical Lord’s Prayer I learned as a child; “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There it is. Forgiveness is essential for us, in the giving as well as the giving. (My own thoughts on the concepts of sin and guilt could lead me widely astray here, but for now let’s just leave it at that.)
Wait a minute, though. We’re erotica writers. Shouldn’t I feel guilty quoting from the Bible here? Will you forgive me if I quote just a bit more from the work that surpasses even Shakespeare as a source of inspiring quotations? How about the Old Testament book The Song of Solomon? Just one lovely erotic verse among many:
“My beloved is mine, and I am his;
he grazes among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
or a young stag on cleft mountains.“
Excuse me. I’ll be in my tent, not feeling at all in need of forgiveness just at the moment.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
For the Forgiver
by Giselle Renarde
Last year, an acquaintance told me she'd written letters to all the people she felt she'd wronged in the past. She was on a journey of self-improvement, which is super, but listening to her talk about it I kind of thought... did you really have to drag all those other people into it?
Am I just a huge cynic? Maybe. Yes. I just feel like an internal journey shouldn't rely on external gestures of this sort. An internal journey shouldn't rely on other people's reactions at all.
Maybe it's the fact that most of the people she sent those letters to were ex-boyfriends that irks me. I mean... if you're sending letters to your exes, what's your game? Even if your intentions are totally pure, receiving communications like that from someone you dated ten or twenty years ago would be really confusing. It's easy to misconstrue a letter of apology. "I hope you'll forgive me" could all too easily be thought to mean "I want you back in my life."
And we're talking about a woman who isn't in love with her husband anymore. Maybe that's what she was saying... perhaps without realizing it.
Here's a controversial idea: maybe seeking forgiveness is ultimately a selfish act.
To me, forgiveness is something that happens internally. It's an energy. This is going to sound really weird coming from a writer, but I think of forgiveness as a silent expression. It isn't about the words. Words can be lies, all lies.
I believe that when you forgive someone, they know. When someone forgives you, you know. Maybe not consciously, but I don't think the conscious piece even matters that much.
And even if the one who is forgiven never knows, does that even matter? Forgiveness is for the forgiver. Forgiveness allows us to let go and move on. That has little to do with the forgiven, especially if these two people are no longer in each other's lives.
When forgiveness happens, the issue is resolved. It doesn't matter if the words are never spoken. It's a psychic interaction.
You're seeing a whole new side of me today.
And, while I've got your attention, forgive me if I take the opportunity to tell you that Round 2 of the Lexi vs. Giselle Smut Smackdown has just begun. For those who find family sex terribly titillating:
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Forgiving Ourselves
Forgiveness is hard. It’s difficult to forgive someone who has wronged you. But it’s even more difficult to forgive ourselves for wronging someone else.
Among my friends, I am often a confidant, a listening ear, someone who will hear a person’s story and won’t judge. It has also been a component of the jobs I’ve worked in over the years. And over all those years, through all those stories, I’ve heard from a lot of people who are unable to forgive themselves.
I think that if we wrong someone, we are far less likely to forgive ourselves than we are if someone wronged us. And I don’t know why that is. Is it perhaps because we expect more of ourselves? But why would we expect so much more of ourselves than we do of anyone else?
I wonder if it has to do with the phrase “forgive and forget.” I think that after the process of forgiving, it’s easy to forget that someone else did something wrong — but if it’s something we did, we have to forever live with the memories. How often do we cringe at a sudden recurrence of a memory that we’re ashamed of? And then, sometimes, those memories play on auto-loop or auto-repeat in our mind and we just dig ourselves deeper into a hole of depression and anxiety, and we tell ourselves that we will never forgive ourselves for what we did.
Sometimes it’s not even a big thing. Sometimes it can be a small error in our judgement, but an error that we thought we were above making, and an error we have difficulty accepting that we’ve done.
But I’m still hung up on the fact that if someone else did that wrong to us — if they made that same slip in judgement — we might hurt for a bit, but the hurt would heal, we’d learn to forgive that person, and, with time, we would forget the hurt and move on with our lives. But we are unable to do that to ourselves.
I’m still bothered by things I said and did in high school. I was generally a quiet introvert with his nose in a Star Trek book, but I’ve been rude to a few people over the years. They probably don’t even have the slightest memory of me being rude — they probably only remember me as the quiet nerd who was always nice. Yet if I think back on my high school years, all that really stands out are those few incidents I’m embarrassed to remember.
During my first go-through of university, I took a recurring summer job that involved lots of public speaking (and singing, and dressing like a giant blue dog sometimes). And after university, I took on a different position that, again, involved a lot of public speaking. And in that position, I had to sometimes work with other people that were going to speak in front of crowds. While I’d become comfortable with it, it still terrified everyone else I was working with. So I gave them one piece of advice — people tend to forget speakers who are spectacularly bad, but remember those who are spectacularly good. The lesson in that? Don’t worry about a disastrous attempt at public speaking — the embarrassment will quickly fade and people will only remember the good parts of your speaking turn.
I think the same goes for memory in general. People are much more likely to remember the good qualities about us and let the bad fall into the dustbin in the back of their minds. So when we wrong someone, when we hurt them, eventually they return to having mostly or only positive feelings of us, or at least neutral feelings. (If we hurt them spectacularly badly, then that process might take a much longer time, but it will usually happen.)
But the hardest person to earn that forgiveness from is ourselves. We need to take a lesson from those around us — we need to learn to be easier on ourselves, more forgiving, more kind, more just, and more loving. After all, we wouldn’t punish someone else so severely for that minor slip in judgement — so why should we hold ourselves to such an unreasonable standard?
Forgive. Forget. Move on.
It’s difficult, but we can do it. And we’ll be so much healthier for it.
Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.
Among my friends, I am often a confidant, a listening ear, someone who will hear a person’s story and won’t judge. It has also been a component of the jobs I’ve worked in over the years. And over all those years, through all those stories, I’ve heard from a lot of people who are unable to forgive themselves.
I think that if we wrong someone, we are far less likely to forgive ourselves than we are if someone wronged us. And I don’t know why that is. Is it perhaps because we expect more of ourselves? But why would we expect so much more of ourselves than we do of anyone else?
I wonder if it has to do with the phrase “forgive and forget.” I think that after the process of forgiving, it’s easy to forget that someone else did something wrong — but if it’s something we did, we have to forever live with the memories. How often do we cringe at a sudden recurrence of a memory that we’re ashamed of? And then, sometimes, those memories play on auto-loop or auto-repeat in our mind and we just dig ourselves deeper into a hole of depression and anxiety, and we tell ourselves that we will never forgive ourselves for what we did.
Sometimes it’s not even a big thing. Sometimes it can be a small error in our judgement, but an error that we thought we were above making, and an error we have difficulty accepting that we’ve done.
But I’m still hung up on the fact that if someone else did that wrong to us — if they made that same slip in judgement — we might hurt for a bit, but the hurt would heal, we’d learn to forgive that person, and, with time, we would forget the hurt and move on with our lives. But we are unable to do that to ourselves.
I’m still bothered by things I said and did in high school. I was generally a quiet introvert with his nose in a Star Trek book, but I’ve been rude to a few people over the years. They probably don’t even have the slightest memory of me being rude — they probably only remember me as the quiet nerd who was always nice. Yet if I think back on my high school years, all that really stands out are those few incidents I’m embarrassed to remember.
During my first go-through of university, I took a recurring summer job that involved lots of public speaking (and singing, and dressing like a giant blue dog sometimes). And after university, I took on a different position that, again, involved a lot of public speaking. And in that position, I had to sometimes work with other people that were going to speak in front of crowds. While I’d become comfortable with it, it still terrified everyone else I was working with. So I gave them one piece of advice — people tend to forget speakers who are spectacularly bad, but remember those who are spectacularly good. The lesson in that? Don’t worry about a disastrous attempt at public speaking — the embarrassment will quickly fade and people will only remember the good parts of your speaking turn.
I think the same goes for memory in general. People are much more likely to remember the good qualities about us and let the bad fall into the dustbin in the back of their minds. So when we wrong someone, when we hurt them, eventually they return to having mostly or only positive feelings of us, or at least neutral feelings. (If we hurt them spectacularly badly, then that process might take a much longer time, but it will usually happen.)
But the hardest person to earn that forgiveness from is ourselves. We need to take a lesson from those around us — we need to learn to be easier on ourselves, more forgiving, more kind, more just, and more loving. After all, we wouldn’t punish someone else so severely for that minor slip in judgement — so why should we hold ourselves to such an unreasonable standard?
Forgive. Forget. Move on.
It’s difficult, but we can do it. And we’ll be so much healthier for it.
Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Seventy Times Seven
By
Lisabet Sarai
“Please,
Sir. I’m so sorry...”
Elena
prostrates herself at my feet, pleading for forgiveness—again.
I’ve already punished her for her latest infraction, as she
expected I would when she showed me the damage. The whip marks that
crisscross her back look red and puffy. I’ll have to rub some
ointment on them later.
The
knowledge that she has disappointed me pains her far more than my
lashes, though. I can’t see her face, but I know it’s stained
with rueful tears. Poor girl. She’s really hurting. I’ll admit I
was angry when I discovered she’d left my favorite flogger outside
on the balcony, despite the fact that it’s rainy season. I needed a
good half hour to cool down before I could give her the thrashing we
both knew she deserved.
Elena’s
far from stupid—she has a degree in computer science from USC and makes a good living as a freelance consultant—but sometimes I think she has a congenital common
sense deficiency. Plus she’s so eager to please that she forgets
everything else but her kinky inspirations. For instance, I vividly
recall the day she handcuffed herself to our bed, hoping to surprise
me when I got home. She left her phone in the living room, so she
didn’t receive my text saying I planned to stop at the club and
wouldn’t be back till ten. Even if she had, there wasn’t much she
could have done, since I keep the keys to the cuffs. By the time I
finally returned, her wrists were a bloody mess and she’d lost
control of her bladder, ruining our best satin sheets. Needless to
say, I was furious—partly
because I understood how risky her behavior had been.
I
forgave her, though. I always do. Though I worry sometimes that in
her enthusiasm, she’ll do herself some serious damage.
She
tries to be a good sub. She’s imaginative, courageous, pliant and
willing, completely heedless of her own desires in trying to cater to
mine. If she were disobedient, bratty, or demanding, like some of my
friend’s submissives, I’d send her packing, but her intentions
are perfect. It’s just her implementations that are flawed.
There
was the time I phoned her, for example, telling her I wanted her
ready to be butt-fucked—as soon as
I arrived. After giving herself an enema and inserting the biggest
plug she could find, she arranged herself in the entry hall, her ass
pointed toward the door. As it happened, I came up in the elevator
chatting with Mrs. Schwartz, the elderly lady in the condo across the
corridor from ours. I shut the door as quickly as I could when I
realized what was just on the other side, but I’m pretty certain
our neighbor got at least a peek at Elena’s delightfully plump
bottom, with her rear hole distended by three inches of purple
silicon. Since then, Madame Schwartz hasn’t even said hello.
Instead
of sodomizing Elena that evening (which I knew she wanted), I paddled
her until she screamed, then shut her in the closet for half an hour.
But
after her punishment, I kissed her, forgave her, and fucked her until
she came twice. Because how can I stay mad at someone so sweet and so
devoted? Not to mention so lush, ripe and always ready for me?
“Get
up, girl,” I order, trying to sound stern. “Go lie on the bed, on
your stomach.”
“Are
you going to whip me some more, Sir?”
Is
that hope I hear in her voice?
“No,
you’ve had enough for now. You need some balm on those welts.”
“Thank
you, Sir.” She rises to her knees then dares to look me in the eye.
I don’t chide her; she needs to see I’m no longer angry. “I’m
really, really sorry, Sir. I swear I’ll do better next time.”
“I’m
sure you will, Elena.” As sure as I am there will be
a next time. “Now get yourself into the bedroom before I change my
mind about that beating.”
“Yes,
Sir!” Off she scrambles, relieved that I’ve regained my normal
imperious manner. As far as Elena’s concerned, the sun is shining
once more, when her Master is back to giving her commands.
As
for me, I’m willing to put up with the good-natured ribbing my Dom
friends give me about Elena. She’s worth the trouble. I’ll try to
protect her from the consequences of her own thoughtlessness. Try to
rein in my anger when she trips up once again. Punish her. Try to
teach her. And forgive her, yet again. Because that’s what it means
to love.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Letting Go Without Forgiving
Where does forgiveness fit into the above quote? Does it fit at all? Can you have bad things happen to you, be strengthened by them and yet never forgive those who inflicted the bad things upon you? That would seem to be contrary to religious teachings-- or at least Christian teachings. In order to be good and healthy and full of sunshine, you have to forgive, right? Otherwise, your soul is just a black, rotting smudge in the universe and you're just a miserable, hateful person. Or something like that.
Personally, I call bullshit.
I'm not a very forgiving person. I mean, I don't hold people to impossibly high standards and then nitpick them to death when they don't live up to them, but when someone has seriously wronged me I'm not quick to forgive. I wouldn't say I'm proud of that fact, but I'm not terribly embarrassed by it either.
I'm slow to anger, usually pretty thick-skinned (more so now than when I was younger) and I expect more from myself than I do from anyone else in the same situation. I put all of my energy into giving as much (or more) than I get. To do something to anger, hurt or disappoint me is not impossible, but it almost requires some effort. And I give lots of chances. Lots.
When my boiling point is reached or the thick-skin has been pricked, all hell doesn't break loose but forgiveness is not at the top of my To Do list. (I'm the quiet angry/hurt/disappointed type. Beware.) Hold a grudge? I've been known to, but revenge is not my style and deliberately hurting someone else is not an option. In other words-- I may not be very forgiving, but I'm comfortable with the terms of my morality. I'm also pretty comfortable with cutting people out of my life who have repeatedly angered, hurt and/or disappointed me after multiple opportunities to get it right.
It's already been pointed out that forgiveness isn't really about the person who has done the wrong, it's about the person who has been wronged. Carrying around that extra baggage is work-- and more weight than any of us needs. But I think you can let go of the anger and hurt without forgiving and without absolving someone of the wrong they have done to you. Is that a particularly Christian notion? I'm guessing Jesus wouldn't think so. But I'm not particularly religious and this isn't a WWJD moment. This is reality according to Kristina.
I've been let down by the people who aren't supposed to let you down. And somehow I managed to let go of the hurt and anger and move on with my life without turning into a bad person in the process. Is that forgiveness? Is the forgiving in the letting go? I don't think you have to forgive in order to know how to love or be happy. I don't think you have to look at the person who broke your heart or ran over your dog or betrayed your trust and say, "I forgive you." If you feel forgiving, by all means you should dole it out as you wish. But there are some things that cannot (and should not) be forgiven and there are people who should not be a part of your life or allowed to repeatedly do those things to you.
In order to be strengthened by those bad things that happen, I don't think you need to feel or offer forgiveness. I think you need to be able to look in the mirror and say, "Let it go. Learn from this experience and move on." It has nothing to do with the person who wronged you-- it's about being able to live with yourself, the hurt that's been done to you and your choices regarding that hurt. The choice should never be to let something bad define or destroy you. You have to let go.
But what if you're the one who has done the bad thing? First, I think you need to be able to look in the mirror and say with all certainty, "I will never do that/let that happen again."--because to repeat the same bad things again and again is to let it define you-- and then you need to let it go and forgive yourself. I think someone else's condemnation is nothing compared to having to look at yourself in the mirror every morning and loathe the image you see. That will destroy you.
But maybe that's just me.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
closing the file
Forgiveness: strength or weakness?
Joe works for Megacorp, where he earns minimum wage. His wife Josie works as a waitress at the Hot Spot Cafe, where the owner and the cook are in a friendly competition to find out who can screw her first. Joe thinks Josie should quit, but she can’t afford to. They have two children.
Joe goes out drinking. When he returns at 3:00 a.m. and wakes Josie up, she tells him off. He hits her. Later that day, he apologizes. Later that week, he gets angry when he remembers his apology; he doesn’t see why the hard-working head of a family should have to behave like a saint. He hits her again.
Josie complains to a clergyman she trusts. The clergyman advises her to forgive her husband.
Josie is so frustrated that when her son and daughter get into a screaming match over a toy they both want, she hits them both harder than she intended. She feels guilty and tells them she loves them. At suppertime, they both refuse to eat their peas and scream for dessert. She tries to send them to their room, and they run around the table instead. Joe tells her she has no idea how to be a mother. When Josie catches the children, she leaves marks on them. Joe threatens to report her to child protection services.
As soon as Joe and Josie’s son Jack can survive on his own, he moves out. While home for a visit, he “comes out” to them as a gay man. Joe feels insulted as a father. He can’t forgive Jack, who goes for counselling. The counsellor advises Jack to forgive Joe.
Father and son lose contact until Joe dies and Jack comes home for the funeral. At the gravesite, he says aloud: “Dad, I forgive you.” There is no answer.
Joe and Josie’s daughter Jackie marries a man like her father, and warns him that she won’t accept the treatment her mother accepted. Her husband Jeff has frustrations of his own. In a moment of rage, he hits her while she is chopping vegetables. She stabs him to death. The justice system does not forgive her.
Would more forgiveness have changed this plot? Would less forgiveness have ended the predictable, everyday patterns of abuse?
Every religion I know of (except Satanism) and most schools of counselling recommend forgiveness. Did your parents give you a gothic upbringing? Forgive them. After all, you survived to adulthood. Are you harassed at work? Assert yourself appropriately, but forgive your harasser as you would like to be forgiven for your own annoying habits. Does your Significant Other behave in ways you consider unreasonable? Forgive him/her for the sake of the relationship.
Some advocates of forgiveness practice what they preach to an extreme degree. I’m reminded here of the local nun who forgave the men who gang-raped her, and petitioned the court to have the charges dropped.
When I read about that, I felt nauseous. Were the assailants likely to feel moved by the forgiveness of a Bride of Christ? Fat chance. Do all the men who rape “enemy” women in war respect the ones who manage to forgive them, after years of soul-searching? Does forgiveness have any effect on the forgiven?
But that’s not the point, I’ve been told. Forgiveness is necessary for the injured person (or one who feels injured) to regain peace of mind. There, I’ve forgiven you, so now the world is at peace.
What is forgiveness anyway? Is it a permission slip handed to abusers, assuring them that there will be no negative consequences for the harm they do? Is it a declaration of truce?
If it’s the second thing, the logic of it appeals to me. I can usually do that – after I’ve made sure the original harm is not going to be repeated over and over until someone drops dead.
Maybe that’s the key to the magic box called “Forgiveness.” I’ve forgiven my alcoholic ex-husband because he died with the year on New Year’s Eve 2006 – and his lonely death was worse than I ever wished on him. He will never again accuse me of being the Scarlet Whore of Babylon. His life is over, and so is my resentment.
I’ve forgiven my parents. In retrospect, their parenting seems better than average for their time, aside from a huge betrayal in my young-adulthood. They both died within six months of each other in 2009. Their ashes rest together in an outdoor columbarium that resembles a file cabinet. That file is closed. If I stood on the grass and screamed at them, I would get no answer except the echo of my own voice against marble.
If I were the heroine of an opera, I might have a spectacular Mad Scene in the cemetery, screaming melodically at the dead. In real life, I lack the necessary lung-power.
My surviving relatives are a different case, but somewhat the same. I’ve been asked whether I’ve forgiven them for accusing me (in writing!) of plotting to take control of my parents’ property without telling anyone else, a factual untruth. I’ve been asked whether I’ve forgiven my grown daughter for declaring our relationship dead. (Hello! I'm still alive!)
All I can say is that I accept my inability to change other people’s thoughts, feelings or behaviour. I will not confess to things I haven’t done. I see no point in apologizing for my existence as long as I’m not willing to end it.
Fritz Perls seems relevant here: I am who I am. You are who you are. If we find each other [connect in some way?], that’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.
If forgiveness is simply a recognition of reality, it seems vastly better than, say, war in the Middle East.
Or maybe forgiveness can be summed up as another piece of sage advice I read somewhere: Go with God. Just go.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Joe works for Megacorp, where he earns minimum wage. His wife Josie works as a waitress at the Hot Spot Cafe, where the owner and the cook are in a friendly competition to find out who can screw her first. Joe thinks Josie should quit, but she can’t afford to. They have two children.
Joe goes out drinking. When he returns at 3:00 a.m. and wakes Josie up, she tells him off. He hits her. Later that day, he apologizes. Later that week, he gets angry when he remembers his apology; he doesn’t see why the hard-working head of a family should have to behave like a saint. He hits her again.
Josie complains to a clergyman she trusts. The clergyman advises her to forgive her husband.
Josie is so frustrated that when her son and daughter get into a screaming match over a toy they both want, she hits them both harder than she intended. She feels guilty and tells them she loves them. At suppertime, they both refuse to eat their peas and scream for dessert. She tries to send them to their room, and they run around the table instead. Joe tells her she has no idea how to be a mother. When Josie catches the children, she leaves marks on them. Joe threatens to report her to child protection services.
As soon as Joe and Josie’s son Jack can survive on his own, he moves out. While home for a visit, he “comes out” to them as a gay man. Joe feels insulted as a father. He can’t forgive Jack, who goes for counselling. The counsellor advises Jack to forgive Joe.
Father and son lose contact until Joe dies and Jack comes home for the funeral. At the gravesite, he says aloud: “Dad, I forgive you.” There is no answer.
Joe and Josie’s daughter Jackie marries a man like her father, and warns him that she won’t accept the treatment her mother accepted. Her husband Jeff has frustrations of his own. In a moment of rage, he hits her while she is chopping vegetables. She stabs him to death. The justice system does not forgive her.
Would more forgiveness have changed this plot? Would less forgiveness have ended the predictable, everyday patterns of abuse?
Every religion I know of (except Satanism) and most schools of counselling recommend forgiveness. Did your parents give you a gothic upbringing? Forgive them. After all, you survived to adulthood. Are you harassed at work? Assert yourself appropriately, but forgive your harasser as you would like to be forgiven for your own annoying habits. Does your Significant Other behave in ways you consider unreasonable? Forgive him/her for the sake of the relationship.
Some advocates of forgiveness practice what they preach to an extreme degree. I’m reminded here of the local nun who forgave the men who gang-raped her, and petitioned the court to have the charges dropped.
When I read about that, I felt nauseous. Were the assailants likely to feel moved by the forgiveness of a Bride of Christ? Fat chance. Do all the men who rape “enemy” women in war respect the ones who manage to forgive them, after years of soul-searching? Does forgiveness have any effect on the forgiven?
But that’s not the point, I’ve been told. Forgiveness is necessary for the injured person (or one who feels injured) to regain peace of mind. There, I’ve forgiven you, so now the world is at peace.
What is forgiveness anyway? Is it a permission slip handed to abusers, assuring them that there will be no negative consequences for the harm they do? Is it a declaration of truce?
If it’s the second thing, the logic of it appeals to me. I can usually do that – after I’ve made sure the original harm is not going to be repeated over and over until someone drops dead.
Maybe that’s the key to the magic box called “Forgiveness.” I’ve forgiven my alcoholic ex-husband because he died with the year on New Year’s Eve 2006 – and his lonely death was worse than I ever wished on him. He will never again accuse me of being the Scarlet Whore of Babylon. His life is over, and so is my resentment.
I’ve forgiven my parents. In retrospect, their parenting seems better than average for their time, aside from a huge betrayal in my young-adulthood. They both died within six months of each other in 2009. Their ashes rest together in an outdoor columbarium that resembles a file cabinet. That file is closed. If I stood on the grass and screamed at them, I would get no answer except the echo of my own voice against marble.
If I were the heroine of an opera, I might have a spectacular Mad Scene in the cemetery, screaming melodically at the dead. In real life, I lack the necessary lung-power.
My surviving relatives are a different case, but somewhat the same. I’ve been asked whether I’ve forgiven them for accusing me (in writing!) of plotting to take control of my parents’ property without telling anyone else, a factual untruth. I’ve been asked whether I’ve forgiven my grown daughter for declaring our relationship dead. (Hello! I'm still alive!)
All I can say is that I accept my inability to change other people’s thoughts, feelings or behaviour. I will not confess to things I haven’t done. I see no point in apologizing for my existence as long as I’m not willing to end it.
Fritz Perls seems relevant here: I am who I am. You are who you are. If we find each other [connect in some way?], that’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.
If forgiveness is simply a recognition of reality, it seems vastly better than, say, war in the Middle East.
Or maybe forgiveness can be summed up as another piece of sage advice I read somewhere: Go with God. Just go.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)