April 22, 2014 • advice, from men, from women • Views: 3595

“…that is the question…” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously said. I may have different take on this than some of you. Some traditions hold that forgiveness is required for the good of the victim and the perpetrator but then also say that (I’m paraphrasing here) judgment and vengeance and forgiveness are the work of God. I agree with the latter statement for the most part – judgment is not my business, unless I’m on a jury or panel of judges.

What about vengeance and forgiveness? You know the old saying “only the good die young”? I think this idea has endured in our cultures partly because many of us just don’t have the stomach, or the evil natures, or the lack of socialization (or whatever you want to call it), required for real revenge. We might fantasize about how we could fight back at someone who had intentionally harmed us, but we don’t act on it. So that leaves many, many evil (or, if you don’t believe in evil, substitute “badly developed” or “damaged” or “ill”) people, and their businesses and organizations, out there to continue to prey on those of us who continue to forgive or unconditionally love them. We’ve seen this happen with whole indigenous cultures, and whole species, different faiths, different beliefs, and greedy big businesses, and governments, and the people around us, time and time again throughout history. It seems to take a shear force of will and selfish (or evil) focus to dominate in this world, so cultures and religions and people who abide in forgiveness, tolerance and pacifism just get run over by the dominant ones, literally and figuratively. One can talk about “soul evolution” and that these “good” cultures and people are “more evolved”, but that doesn’t help in the real world when one is confronted with aggression or destructive behaviors. Shouldn’t we fight back? Don’t you just wish that you could justify sometimes, just sometimes once-in-a-while, returning the favor and acting in some kind of way to teach these folks a lesson, serve them up some consequences, so that maybe, just maybe, they’ll think twice about doing it again to someone else – “teaching a lesson” because, obviously, we pacific folk would be unable to act in as destructive as manner towards those who would destroy us as would be required for them to be rendered incapable of hurting others in the future… so we’d ultimately do what our consciences would allow and stop short…  Dr. Phil talks about this in his book “Life Code – The New Rules for Winning in the Real World” – his name for these malevolent people is “BAITERS” and he describes how they do what they do to get what they want.

So which is it? “Forgive and forget”? Or neither? Is it better to continue in forgiveness, and continue to allow destructive behaviors from others? Or is it better to strike back in some way? I mean, really, what about survival? Wouldn’t we be able to do even more, even greater good for others and the earth if we survived? Shouldn’t we be self-protective too – even if it might mean stooping to their level? I discussed this with someone who had had the exact same experience I had, with the exact same damaged person except that their experience was a year or so earlier – only the names, times & places changed, the actions and behaviors were the same. She had had this same discussion with a spiritual advisor who said, “You don’t have to forgive, you just move on and don’t drink their poison”.

“You don’t have to forgive”. I like that. I know of nothing that requires that you “forgive” anything or anyone. And you certainly don’t have to forget. As a matter of opinion, you really don’t want to forget, because we should all need and want to learn from our experiences. If we forgive and forget, put it out (or block it out) of our minds, we might deprive ourselves of the opportunity to learn and grow from it. And a constructive spin from Chris Rock on “The View” about bullies – “Bullies make the world go around – there’s no Microsoft without bullies, no comedians…the Empire State Building would be four stories tall…bullies make kids overcompensate, only through overcompensation is AIDS going to be cured or is the cell phone invented…” So learn from it about yourself and what you felt and what you want and what you are capable of and comfortable with, as well as about them so you can more easily recognize the warning signs and maybe know what you would prefer to avoid the next time. As Maya Angelou says: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” But you don’t have to forgive.

“You just move on”. I like that too. Simple concept. The quotes on this subject are too numerous to mention, as are the songs, but here are a few of my post-its for your bulletin board…“It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crops” from George Eliot in Adam Bede, 1859… “I can’t wait all my life on a street of broken dreams.”- Journey in “It Could Have Been You”… Or, more simply, “Don’t let the past steal your present.” - Terri Guillemets. Accepting what is, is hard work. It’s easier said than done of course, which is why there are so many quotes and songs and philosophies. The only thing I can add is the personal experience, and old wisdom, that time really does work wonders… And some concepts from Dr. Amen’s The Brain in Love book on his brain research, as paraphrased by me – the other person is a habit that is embedded in your brain, it takes a while to reorganize the brain into not constantly seeking that habit but you can do it – just move on, get out there and make some new good memories to overwrite the old ones, and if you can’t stop the old ones from running wild in your brain at least make them the bad ones so you can remember why you’ll be happy they aren’t around to hurt you anymore.

“Don’t drink their poison”… Again, I go back to my previous question, why not? You’ll need to decide this one for yourself based on your personal philosophy, beliefs and ethics, but for me it’s simple. I don’t want to feel as bad as it would make me feel to do something deliberately harmful to anything or anyone. It’s just too hard on me. I’m one of those people who save spiders and put them outside, and who feels guilty about having to try to rid my garden of gophers when the deterrents don’t work, and who won’t cut down a tree or plant until it’s absolutely, undeniably dead after I’ve tried everything to save it. If you don’t have my compassion issues, you might consider the old fashioned “stooping to their level” concept and ask yourself if acting in kind puts you in the same group as them, if allowing your desire for revenge to override your sense of yourself makes you the same as they are. In any case, I’m not saying that truly bad people who are capable of going on to hurt more people shouldn’t be stopped if they do something criminal, or that there shouldn’t be a means of warning the next folk to beware if the harm caused is not technically officially criminal. As a civilized society, it would be nice for us to have a way to warn people they are about to be taken advantage of or harmed. Then it would be up to the warned to beware, and not to us to harm ourselves by drinking the poison and exacting the punishment.

From the Dalai Lama in a Facebook post – “Theoretically, one could imagine a situation where armed intervention at an early stage might prevent large-scale conflict. The problem is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict the outcome of violence. That it will be just is not guaranteed at the outset – it will only become clear in hindsight. The only certainty is that where there is violence, there is always and inevitably suffering.”

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