Yes, it was a difficult weekend. I had houseguests, and one of
them has truly been wronged. Not once, but many times. Not by
strangers, but by his own family. Not long ago, but long ago and
recently.
It made me angry just to hear the stories, though he told them
only as they related to the conversation at hand (“So what
happened to your father’s farm?” sort of thing), and there was
no rancor on his part. Incredulously, he appears to have made
his peace with some real injustices. But then that’s one of the
reasons we all love him so much.
My friend is very forgiving, and there’s a reason why: he’s had
a lot of practice. Forgiveness is like another EQ competency,
Resilience. The good news is you can learn it. The bad news is
there will always be opportunity. And you can reverse those two!
So, yes, my friend is very forgiving. I imagine he has forgiven
77 times. If you’re familiar with the Biblical passage: “Then
Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the
church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as
seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell
you, seventy-seven times.’”
This forgiving friend of mine is of-an-age, and also a
physician.
“How could you forgive him for that?” I asked him, about a
particularly unjust occurrence.
“Because I want to live and preserve my health,” he said.
Physicians know about emotions and health.
THE TWO WOLVES
There’s a story currently circulating the Internet about a
Native American grandfather “whose eyes have seen too much,”
talking with his grandson. The boy was talking about an
injustice that had happened that day that left him enraged.
The grandfather admitted that he, too, had felt such rage. “I
feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart,” he told the
child. “One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other
wolf is the loving, compassionate one.”
The grandfather said, “I too, at times, have felt a great hate
for those who have taken so much with no sorrow for what they
do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is
like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die.”
When he finished talking, the grandson asked him, “Which wolf
will win the fight in your heart?”
“The one I feed,” replied the grandfather.
[Go here
http://www.turtle-tracks.org/issue50/i50_3.html to read
the whole story]
PACO…GIOVANNI…TON…SERGEI…ED, JR…JOHANN…PIERRE … THEIR NAMES ARE
LEGION
Ernest Hemingway wrote a story about forgiveness. It’s the story
of a Spanish father and his teenage son who are at odds, and
eventually the strained relationship breaks. When Paco, the
rebellious son, runs away from home, his father begins a long,
grief-stricken search to find him and bring him back.
As a last resort, the exhausted father placed an ad in a Madrid
newspaper, hoping his son would see the ad and respond to it.
The ad read:
Dear Paco, Please meet me in front of the newspaper office at
noon. All is forgiven. Love, Father
As Hemingway tells the story, the next day at noon, in front of
the newspaper office, there are 800 Pacos, all seeking
forgiveness from their fathers.
HOW YOU PRESERVE YOUR HEALTH
We have all been wronged. I have been. You have been. Your
father has been. The queen of England has been. No one escapes.
Some of us have been egregiously wronged and live with rage …
for a week, a year, a lifetime. Our anger interferes with our
ability to forgive. And why, perhaps you are asking, should you
forgive? There has been incest … infidelity … theft … betrayal …
Certainly you’re justified in your rancor after what’s been done
to you. Frederick Buechner, theologian, writes: “Of the seven
deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your
wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll
over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to
come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you
are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is
a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are
wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
We suffer when we’re angry. It causes physiological reactions
that damage our health, and drive others away, leaving us to
fester in our own isolated hell. We also suffer because we feel
guilty about being angry. And we may feel strangled because we
can’t act on it. It’s a complicated emotion. It is, however,
neither good nor bad in and of itself. Emotions just “are.” They
guide us. They tell us what to do.
Anger tells us there is danger and we need to deal with it
directly. The problem develops when we have not learned
Emotional Intelligence and don’t know how to handle this anger.
It can live forever in its raw state if not dealt with,
undermining our health. But what if … What if the person who did
this is dead? Or estranged, like Paco from hjs father? … Or
virulently poised to do more harm? Or an apology won’t really
do, as in “I’m sorry I was drunk for the first 15 years of your
life”? Or “I’m sorry I had your father shot by a firing squad in
front of your eyes?” What if they absolutely do not deserve our
forgiveness? What do we do then? Being adamantly and
relentlessly self-forgiving is an EQ competency. At times it’s
even harder to forgive ourselves than it is to forgive others,
and we stand in need as well.
While we are all Paco, we are all, also, his father. We create
our own world, and as we refuse to forgive others, we refuse to
allow others to forgive us. What goes around comes around. Being
forgiving – forgiving yourself and others – is highly
recommended. The person you’re harboring the hatred for isn’t
likely to be affected by it, but you are which makes you twice
the victim, and more the fool. You are demanding from them
something they can’t or won’t give, and you therefore remain
tied to them forever. They don’t deserve you to forgive them,
but you deserve to forgive them. HELL
I’m reminded of Dante’s “Inferno.” In the fifth ring of hell
live “the Wrathful.” Says the commentary, “they spend their time
here either tearing at each other in anger or …” Yes, that’s
being in hell.
But even more fitting is the ninth and final circle of Hell,
Cocytus, which is ice cold (those farthest from God’s love).
There we find those who betrayed those to whom they should
forever have been faithful, those treacherous to kin, and the
image is this -- two people are frozen in the same hole so that
one can gnaw at the nape of the other’s neck. An apt metaphor
for how we can gnaw at ourselves with resentment and anger.
To paraphrase Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., psychoneuroimmunologist, ‘Go
ahead and rant and rave, rage, beat your chest, fight! But to
the victor goes the bypass.’
For your own mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health,
you must learn how to let it go. Work with a coach to develop
your Emotional Intelligence. Anger directly affects our
immunological system, which is our health, and it is an ongoing
part of life for all of us. It’s the price we pay for being
human.
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