This year, I am participating in an honors program about evil, retribution, and forgiveness. This program focuses primarily on philosophical understandings of these concepts. I am not much of an angry person. I suppose I can be stoic in that sense. I do not seek retribution. I also don’t forgive.
I entered into this program thinking that learning more about forgiveness would help me learn to forgive people in my life. One of the discussions on forgiveness put forth by Richard Norvin in a short article on forgiveness includes a compilation of characteristics pulled through the literature such as:
- Forgiveness takes place between two people: the wrong-doer and the wronged,
- Forgiveness is focused on releasing the wrong-doing from the negative emotions attached to the wrongdoing,
- Forgiveness is for those interested in repairing a relationship.
This understanding of forgiveness does not include the more popular understanding of forgiveness as being psychologically beneficial to the person who was wronged. It also excluded the other popular push in psychology to forgive the self. This shift in the understanding of the function of forgiveness challenged my thoughts on the concept.
Norvin’s way of presenting forgiveness meant it did not apply to me, or at least not the situations I wanted to learn to forgive in. I wanted to learn about forgiveness to see if it would be possible to learn to forgive friends who were once close to me for how they responded after learning a mutual friend assaulted me.
I wanted to see if I could let go of any negative feelings I still held—not that there are many. Norvin’s framing of forgiveness would not work in my situation. I had no interest in repairing the friendship.
Additional discussions throughout the program covered anger. Anger in our discussions focuses on the negative emotions directed at somebody else who has harmed or is perceived to have harmed us. Throughout the discussions on anger, one of the members in my group mentioned that he was always frustrated when people are wronged and they don’t get angry. Another one of my peers shared an article on how women are encouraged and pushed not to experience anger but still embody the negative emotions without being able to express anger in its raw form.
I asked myself repeatedly after that session why I was not angry at these people? Why their behavior, the way they “wronged” me did not anger me. I asked myself if I was so indoctrinated that I refused to experience anger because of the gender expectations of where I grew up? Had I learned to never be angry?
Maybe.
But after thinking about it more, I realized I was not angry about a [perceived] harm. Them not taking a stand was not a wrong that harmed me, at least not directly.
I was surprised by their actions, choices, and behaviors—or lack thereof. But this inaction, rather than being a wrong that I had any right to be angry about instead pushed me to question whether or not our values were compatible. They weren’t. Their inaction changed how I viewed them.
Especially when it came out that we knew four other women he had done the same thing to.
Inaction is not inherently harmful or a wrong inflicted on me. But this inaction on certain issues, notable gender-based violence is incompatible with the way I view the world. As I grow older, I am learning there is a growing list of issues I am unwilling to compromise on:
- Gender-based violence,
- Hate crimes/hate speech of any kind
- LGBTQ+ discrimiation
- Racism
- Mistreatment of immigrants and asylum seekers
- Animal abuse
I am sure there are plenty more that are not immediately coming to mind. I am all for having different opinions on politics and debating the benefits of gun control or increasing taxes or whatever, but when it comes to inflicting or ignoring the infliction of harm on another life form, I find I have little to no toleration for it. This makes my still not 100% return to veganism contradictory, but it is a work in progress. My transition period includes limited consumption of animal products.
We are imperfect; I get it. I am nowhere near perfect nor do I expect others to be. I don’t want to exist in a vacuum where everyone around me believes the things I believe and acts the way I would like to. I am not aiming for a utopia. But I have a choice in the people I surround myself with. I also have the choice about what I get angry about and what I choose to forgive. In my understanding of the universe, which is basically that none of us understand anything and we are all playing a game while trying to figure out the rules, I also get to define what forgiveness and anger mean to me.
This program is giving me additional ways to interpret and think about these concepts which have helped contextualize the complexities of different situations in my life. Has it brought me any closer to forgiving? Not at all. But it has helped me realize I don’t need to, not for their sake or my own. Sometimes, forgiveness is not required.