"There is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness."
From the deepest recesses of the illness that would claim his life, reducing his brain to fever and his lungs to a pulp, John Keats rung out a bell-clear truth in a letter to his closest friend: "If I recover, I will do all in my power to correct the mistakes made during sickness; and if I should not, shall my faults be forgiven."
"At the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being," noted David Whyte in his essential wisdom in our most profound words. Whyte suggests that passing forgiveness during life opens our personhood to receiving forgiveness at the end of life from others, ourselves, and the history that will be written and spoken of us.
But how?
How do we expand so fully to make room for that forgiveness? How do we grapple and jumble our pressing needs? How do I ask others for the same? Pain calcifies much like anything else; it becomes a malignant, odiferous thing we carry, hold, embrace, and even nurture. How do we move past its overwhelming mass?
Dried purple hyacinths. In Classical legend, Apollo adored and accidentally killed Hyacinthus, a beautiful youth. Purple variety means "Please Forgive Me." I often feel too small to forgive. I have no room; if only I could grow another elbow or an eleventh toe, I might manage it. Then, I could use those parts to forgive without exhaling all that I am in the process.
"The part that forgives is not the part that is hurt," Whyte reminds us, suggesting we have reserves unseen and untapped.
If any human grasped the physical and mental mind space compulsory for forgiveness, it would have been The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu (October 7, 1931 – December 26, 2021), an Anglican Archbishop who applied theological beliefs and peaceful activism against apartheid in his native South Africa.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2015. In 1994, a decade after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Reverend Tutu was asked by the recently-elected President Nelson Mandela to head The Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Its purpose was to investigate the wrongdoings of a heavily scarred nation anxious to form new traditions and heal deep wounds.
As chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I have often been asked how the people of South Africa were able to forgive the atrocities and injustices they suffered under apartheid. Our journey in South Africa was quite long and treacherous. Today it is hard to believe that, up until our first democratic election in 1994, ours was a country that institutionalised racism, inequality, and oppression. In apartheid South Africa only white people could vote, earn a high-quality education, and expect advancement or opportunity. There were decades of protest and violence. Much blood was shed during our long march to freedom. When, at last, our leaders were released from prison, it was feared that our transition to democracy would become a bloodbath of revenge and retaliation. Miraculously we chose another future. We chose forgiveness.
From this pulpit of experience, drawing from the deepest pain imaginable, Tutu created a healing and forgiveness protocol that the Commission enacted on behalf of South Africans.
Ms Mpho Tutu, CEO of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, with her father, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, announce the proposed lease of the Granary, a 203-year-old building in Cape Town, as the home of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation Centre. August 11, 2014. Learn more. In 2014, four years after he officially retired from public life and seven years before he died, Tutu collaborated with his daughter Mpho Tutu (born in 1963), an Anglican priest and civic leader in her own right, to write The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World.
This humble guide to forgiveness is not about diminishing pain or reducing need; it's about expanding mercy and enabling voice. It is a remarkable book built upon a lifetime of remarkable work.
The invitation to forgive is not an invitation to forget. Nor is it an invitation to claim an injury is less hurtful than it really is. Nor is it a request to paper over the fissure in a relationship, to say it's okay when it's not. It's not okay to be injured. It's not okay to be abused. It's not okay to be violated. It's not okay to be betrayed. The invitation to forgive is an invitation to find healing and peace.
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Forgiving requires giving voice to the violations and naming the pains we have suffered. Forgiving does not require that we carry our suffering in silence or be martyrs on a cross of lies.
An illustrated Forgiveness Cycle by Parth Shah for The Examined Life. "I realized the overlap of the steps/stages and how they mix into each other. I used gradients to represent this phenomenon. In a gradient, you cannot tell where one colour ends and the other begins. Both the revenge loop and forgiveness cycle share that aspect with gradients."Telling the Story
Speaking, actually opening our mouths, and saying words to others is a critical part of forgiving and releasing. Speaking forms the very first step of the process.
Telling the story is how we get our dignity back after we have been harmed. It is how we begin to take back what was taken from us, and how we begin to understand and make meaning out of the hurting.
Telling the facts of your story is the most important element of this first step, and it is how you begin to take back what was taken from you. When you tell your story, it is as if you are putting the puzzle pieces back together again, one hesitant memory at a time. In the beginning, your memories and your facts, depending on what the trauma is and when it happened, may be fragmented and hard to articulate. They may not follow a chronological order or be told in a linear fashion. All this is understandable.
Like Keats, who wrote to someone else about his need to bear his soul, choosing the best possible recipient of our words is critical. We must look for space, comfort, silence, and even love in that recipient. As many of us know, there is little comfort in bearing our soul to an unfeeling universe and hearing hollow claps compared to a heart-to-heart with the ones who provide intimate space and comfort.
Tutu continues:
One of the most important decisions you will make is choosing whom to tell your story to. Ideally, you tell your story to the person who caused the harm. There is a profound reclaiming of dignity and strength when you can stand in front of your abuser, stand in your truth, and speak of how that person hurt you.
Naming the Hurt
Finding the appropriate word that names the pain must develop slowly with open-hearted, even vulnerable intentions. Finding the word when words are not enough, moving beyond the frontiers of language and the boundaries of the unsayable.
This language puzzling demands emotional depth and self-expression that is beyond human capacity. But that does not mean it cannot be done.
When we deny our feelings, when we choose not to name our hurts and instead reject the pain of our losses, we always end up seeking destruction. The only way to stop the pain is to accept it. The only way to accept it is to name it and, by naming it, to feel it fully.
One of the most beautiful lines in this book is "There can be no debate," meaning the person who receives your pain cannot argue, deny, or reject. In expressing and receiving others' pain, we must create space for it, all of it. Again, communication between others is everything.
Illustrated Revenge Loop by designer Parth Shah for The Examined Life. "In the revenge loop, the gradient gradually takes a darker tone to signify that a little darkness holds power to spread around your entire sphere and eventually lead to revenge or forgiveness. It is important to be vigilant about which way you are leaning."Granting Forgiveness
Only when this safe space born of human connection is established can forgiveness have room to take root and grow.
After we tell our stories and name our hurts, the next step is to grant forgiveness. Sometimes this choice happens quickly and sometimes it happens slowly, but inevitably it is how we move forward along the Fourfold Path. We choose forgiveness because it is how we find freedom and keep from remaining trapped in an endless loop of telling our stories and naming our hurts. It is how we move from victim to hero. A victim is in a position of weakness and subject to the whims of others. Heroes are people who determine their own fate and their own future. A victim has nothing to give and no choices to make. A hero has the strength and ability to be generous and forgiving, and the power and freedom that come from being able to choose to grant forgiveness.
When I read and reread the work of writers James Baldwin or Maya Angelou, poet Rupi Kaur, or painter David Wojnarowicz, those who use their art to express and reconfigure pain, I wonder if it worked. Is it enough to name? Does there need to be a recipient? A nodding head?
For true forgiveness, lasting cycle-breaking forgiveness, the Reverends Tutu articulate beautifully one more action is necessary.
Renewing or Releasing the Relationship
What does it mean to renew or release a relationship? You might think you are not in a relationship with the stranger who assaulted you or the person in prison who killed your loved one or the cheating spouse you divorced so many years ago, but a relationship is created and maintained by the very act of harm that stands between you. This relationship, like every relationship that calls for forgiveness, must be either renewed or released. When your spouse says, for example, 'I'm sorry for yelling at you,' you may forgive and continue on in the marriage, renewing the relationship. When a boyfriend or girlfriend says, 'I'm sorry for betraying your trust,' you may forgive but choose not to see that person again, instead releasing the relationship.
In cultural parlance, we often set up a forgive/forget distinction as if one is allowed but not the other. The Book of Forgiving provides an alternative with the word "release." To me, it means to exist separately in the world, to bind emotional and intellectual ties to one another, and to walk freely.
According to German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, brotherly love is the love that underlines all others. There is no suggestion that forgiveness is easy, only that it is possible.
Better yet, it's probable.
We are able to forgive because we are able to recognise our shared humanity. We are able to recognise that we are all fragile, vulnerable, flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness and cruelty. We also recognise that no one is born evil and that we are all more than the worst thing we have done in our lives. Human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty, cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love and so much more. We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from the sinners, but we cannot. We all share the core qualities of our human nature, so sometimes we are generous and sometimes selfish. Sometimes we are thoughtful and other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind, and sometimes cruel. This is not a belief. This is a fact.
I remember a line from Maya Angelou's generous twilight wisdom: "I learned to forgive myself first." I invite you to reread this article with the idea that the person who harmed you might be yourself, not another. I think - I hope - it works equally well.
Find further comfort in Toni Morrison's prescription for stillness in times of chaos, Pema Chödrön's landmark work on embracing pain and confusion born from her life's work as a practicing Buddhist nun, Catholic activist Dorothy Day on the extraordinary generosity required to self-forgive, and the compelling, generous, and courageous consideration of joy as a means of living from The Reverend Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.