The True Definition of Forgiveness

The true definition of forgiveness should center on the benefits of feeling peaceful. Finding peace does not need to be complicated. Remember, all grievances begin when something in a person’s life happens that they do not want to happen.

From that initial unpleasantness they take things too personally, blame the offender for how they feel, and tell a grievance story. The grievance means that too much space is rented in their minds to hurt and anger.

Remember this definition of forgiveness: It is first foremost a practical definition. Your goal is to feel peaceful. The feeling of peace comes as you heal your grievances - blaming less, taking responsibility for how you feel, and changing the story you tell.

This is called peace forgiveness. As you feel more and more peace, you are progressing in your goal to heal from your grievances. You are learning to forgive.

There are three components when it comes to forgiveness. The most critical component is the story we tell. When we tell a story of victimization we have already taken something too personally and are blaming the offender for how we feel.

When you tell the story of your heroic overcoming of an injustice, you will naturally blame less and take things less personally. However, it is very difficult to move directly to changing a well-rehearsed grievance story.

To avoid that problem, you should begin by taking responsibility for how you feel. We have to remember that we are responsible for our emotional experience. Our past is not responsible for our present feelings. Just because something unpleasant occurred in our past or may occur in our future does not mean that day after day should be ruined.

Difficulties, mistreatments, and unkindness do not have an extended warranty. We become helpless when we give the person who hurt us excessive power over how we feel. Our painful feelings will diminish only when we take that power back and show we are responsible for how we feel.

There is a complementary technique that will help us reclaim responsibility for how we feel. This technique is easy to practice and available to everyone. It is to not lose sight of the good things in our life.

This sounds simple but takes some effort. What this means is we spend time and energy finding the beauty and love in our life to balance the time we spend on grudges, grievances, and wounds.

3 Points to Consider About Forgiveness

One of the major misconceptions regarding forgiveness that most of us have is that it somehow absolves the "bad man." There isn't. Simply put, forgiveness is the act of repairing your own heart and mind.

It follows that letting go of those feelings through forgiveness would offer healing because harboring resentment, wrath, and other negative emotions toward someone harms your mind and heart. Consider these ideas regarding forgiveness:

1. Forgiveness is reserved for people, not for abhorrent behavior. There are some deeds that are unimaginably evil and completely inexcusable. Even though their behavior is not, people can still be forgiven.

2. Forgiveness does not exonerate the offender of the offense. Simply choosing to let go of your own sorrow, fear, and wrath and turn back to love is what it means to forgive someone. The connection to sorrow is clear from this.

3. Forgiving someone does not indicate that you agree with what they did wrong or that they won't harm you in the future.

Forgiving Does Not Mean that You Will Forget

It's a frequent misconception that forgiving someone causes all of your negative emotions to vanish and be replaced by happy ones. The difficulty with this expectation is that it is so categorical, making it impossible to forgive and forcing you to choose between not forgiving at all.

Giving "real forgiveness" allows you to accept your anger and acknowledge it as healthy and necessary. You don't just erase it and start again with compassion or love. Real people with actual emotional wounds do not experience this kind of magical healing.

Even years from now, your past anguish may emerge, seize hold of you, and bring you down when you consider how you've been wounded or when something triggers the recollection of your suffering.

Expecting anything different is denying the capacity of the human brain to recall horrific events and make you relive them with the same level of vivid detail and visceral intensity as when they first happened.

There may be moments when you have fits of hatred and are unable to distinguish what the offender did to you from who he is, even though you have forgiven them and are dedicated to living in peace.

Because you are still a human being, it is impractical to assume that your response can be neatly categorized. By accepting this, you'll be able to forgive more people and make way for the inevitable unpleasant emotional outbursts.

When you truly forgive, you don't necessarily empty yourself of all negative emotions; instead, you let other, more delicate or constructive emotions, such sadness and mourning, coexist with the negative ones.

Along with your anger, you experience a richer, more nuanced, and more complex emotion that takes into account both the wrongs and the rights committed by the offender, as well as the harm they caused you and their attempts to make amends.

A Real Life Example

However, be prepared because forgiving won’t wash away the injury; you may be left with a residue of bad feelings and an overwhelming sense of loss. This is what my good friend Sherri experienced. Although she forgave her husband, Bob, for having an affair, she continued to struggle with bitterness and sorrow.

“I know he’s trying hard to make me feel valued and safe,” she assured me, “but I’ve lost the idealized image I had of him - forever. My feelings continue to oscillate between empathy and an unbearable sense of betrayal.”

Two years after Bob revealed his affair, Sherri sent me this note: “The affair still hurts very much, although the therapy helps. So does reading and the passing of time. We live with it and do the best we can, and we both love each other.”

It could be said that Sherri hasn’t forgiven Bob yet because her positive feelings toward him are at times tainted with negative ones. It could also be said that she has partially forgiven him and may forgive him more over time. When you forgive, you don’t flip a switch.