Someone asked the singer-songwriter Nick Cave, on his intimate personal site The Red Hand Files, “How do you forgive somebody whom you love very much but has done something truly terrible?”
He answered:
How to forgive the unforgivable? Now there is a question. Sometimes we feel the crime is such a violation, and so egregious, that it is beyond absolution – but the struggle to forgive is where it can find its true meaning. Even the attempt to move toward forgiveness allows us the opportunity to touch the borders of grace. To try is an act of resistance against the forces of malevolence – a form of defiant grace.
Read the rest of his response here.
The page is a powerful piece of writing, and very wise, but having had unforgivable destruction and damage done to me in my life by people who chose to inflict these wounds, and in some cases thought doing so was hilariously funny, I just can’t.
They turned me into that “raisin in the sun,” and at the end of my day, I feel that my life was a failure and a waste…of time, ability, and talent.
I’ve been told that “the world would be a better place if I was dead” and there are times I believe it.
Some of them did so under the power nd color of authority.
So it’s hard to forgive people who needlessly inflict that on you.
I’m so, so sorry people did that to you. Unforgiveable. And you do NOT have to forgive.
The world is a better place with you in it.
–Snarly
I’m questioning the understanding of what forgiveness means in this context. The general therapy-type focus on how failing to forgive means that the person who wronged you is still controlling you seems manipulative.
The most hated person in my life behaved unforgivably. I will never *forgive* him in such a way that, even if he weren’t dead, all could be well again between us. I’m not angry at him anymore but am comfortable saying that the world is a better place without him.
It seems like “letting go of anger” isn’t what is conventionally understood as “forgiveness”. Forgiveness implies that things are ok now. Carte blanche acceptance of bad behavior doesn’t feel like grace to me.
Great comment.
It’s an interesting question, how to find peace after being wronged. I (Snarly) feel that Cave’s statement is too much of a generalization. As we say on SorryWatch quite often, “Apologies are mandatory. Forgiveness is not.” I worry that we fetishize forgiveness; we eat up stories about it. Your distinction between “letting go of anger” and “forgiveness” is meaningful.
And I’m so sorry that person hurt you.