Forgiveness

I’m still reading the Steve Jobs biography. I was reading about his early missteps at Apple, one of which was his determination to turn his back on their earlier products. When his team developed the Macintosh, they dropped compatibility for their other computers. My paternal grandmother’s family is known for their ability to hold grudges. Some of the family schisms are legendary, with one family member or another going to their grave not talking to a person because of a minor slight from 50+ years ago. I tease my dad that he’s inherited this trait because he held a grudge against Apple for almost 30 years for dropping support for his Apple IIe when they released the Mac. (My husband likewise teases me that I’ve inherited the trait—I refuse to shop at Lowe’s after their delivery contractors did $1,400 worth of damage to a newly renovated kitchen when installing a fridge. To me it just seems like solid financial sense to avoid throwing good money after bad. I suppose my dad would make the same argument.)

My dad did eventually choose to forget about the past (if not fully forgive it) and has become an iPhone devotee in recent years. But thinking about Apple and our family’s grudges led me to think about forgiveness and what it means. I like this definition of forgiveness: an individual wishes to not retaliate against the person [or entity!] who caused them harm, and they are actively looking forward to future relationships with others. In the linked study, which is a meta-analysis of studies looking into the relationship between forgiveness and happiness, the authors found that forgiveness is associated with higher subjective well-being (the scientific term for happiness), higher life satisfaction (basically my definition of long-term happiness), more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions (basically my definition of short-term happiness).

The study authors give an explanation of why they think this is: forgiveness removes some of the negative associations with the aggressor allowing more room for positive emotions. This is how I, too, would explain the correlation if I were only thinking in terms of Short-Term Happiness. Upon reflection the aggrieved might feel like they’ve learned from the experience (turning a negative into a positive) or they may have grieved and moved on (letting go of the negative altogether).

However, I think there’s more to the picture. In terms of the Right Hand of Long-Term Happiness, holding onto blame of another person can touch on a number of the Six Needs. The most obvious is social because oftentimes the aggressor is someone with whom the aggrieved is close. The betrayal and hurt feelings can greatly damage any relationship, but especially so when the aggressor is a trusted person.

The aggrieved might also feel like part of the blame rests on their shoulders, which can impact one’s esteem: “How can I have been so stupid to trust that person when I’d been warned or when (retrospectively) all of the signs were there?” or “I must have some shortcoming to have been targeted.” And so on.

Often the aggressor will attack one or more of the aggrieved’s Six Needs: exerting control over the individual (autonomy), emotionally terrorizing or physically threatening them (safety), physically attacking them (physiological), isolating them (social), belittling them (esteem).

As described in the definition above, by letting go of the anger that one feels toward an aggressor, one opens themself up to new, more positive relationships (social). It could also mean showing oneself some grace if the wronged is able to release personal blame (esteem). Finally, I believe it stops the aggrieved from living in that moment where their needs were being deprived by the aggressor. When every time one’s thoughts touch on the aggressor and they’re reminded of the damages caused by that person, it’s like re-living the experience and feeling the injury of Needs being deprived all over again.

In one of the most widely documented examples of aggression by one group of people on another, the Nazis were adept at attacking all Six Needs to dehumanize their enemies. Even before they opened the concentration camps, they waged a campaign against German Jews by vilifying them and blaming them for all of Germany’s problems. As soon as the Nazis gained power in government, they enacted policies against Jewish citizens. These policies were intended to subjugate them (autonomy) and make them feel inferior (esteem). By turning the Jewish people into villains, the Nazis not only ostracized them from the wider community (social), the boiling hatred also bubbled into threats against their safety. Finally, the restrictions imposed limited their access to resources which impacted all Six Needs but especially physiological (e.g. Jewish patients could not be admitted to municipal hospitals) and growth (e.g. limits on how many Jewish students could enroll in German higher education; no resources to train for the 1936 Olympics even if they had been allowed to compete).

In Auschwitz survivor Eddie Jaku’s memoir The Happiest Man on Earth, he wrote:

I do not ask my fellow survivor to forgive the German people. I could not do this myself. But I have been lucky enough and had enough love and friendship in my life that I have been able to release the anger I felt towards them. It does no good to hold onto anger. Anger leads to fear, which leads to hate… Hate is the beginning of a disease, like cancer. It may kill your enemy, but it will destroy you in the process too.

What does forgiveness mean to you? What advice would you give to someone holding onto hatred/blame?