On the unforgivable
There are some mistakes that are easy to get past, but what happens when one makes a mistake that violates a principle that they consider important?
Sometimes, an action is unforgivable. If the another person makes this kind of mistake, it is possible to either let it sit or to be merciful and forgive the person. But this can't be easily done for oneself. If you forgive the unforgivable in yourself, it feels like you are changing your principles. It doesn't feel like mercy, it feels like failure. So how do you get past a mistake that matters?
The only answer I've been able to come up with is time. Just let it sit. It fades in memory. It becomes less important.
Maybe there's some rational way to say something like "I've acted 10 billion times and only 6 of these times were unforgivable mistakes, so this is a reasonable proportion." But my mind cannot work that way. For me, unforgivable is not forgivable. The interesting thing, from reading what I wrote above, is that I seem to think that the person who did something unforgivable can be forgiven, but the action itself cannot. That makes sense.
Any thoughts?
5 comments:
By definition you've established two rigid principles for yourself;
1. There are a class of actions for which you cannot be forgiven.
2. If you don't think about something you've done for long enough, it's as if you didn't do it.
I think (2) in particular is dangerous. You're advocating suppressing memories and actions you don't like, and the eventual result (since it's not possible to fully suppress anything in your subconscious) will be some sad sort of recurring neurosis.
(1) is more interesting. You're basically taking a rigid stance with respect to some actions, and now you're left questioning what the consequences are if you actually do those things. Others have contemplated such things, and come up with: the death sentence, excommunication, cold shoulders, expulsion, and self-injury. Any of these sound interesting to you?
I think you might be taking a hard line simply because it's the easy way out. Everything's classified; there are things you can do and things you can't, and there's no room for shades of gray.
I'm pretty sure the world doesn't correspond to that model, unfortunately.
2 doesn't actually apply to me quite so much. I don't think things go away, but they definitely do become less of a priority.I feel I've done maybe 4 things in my life that I consider unforgivable. And they don't just go away. They're always the things I screwed up on. They're always there. But time makes them stop being dominant in my mental landscape.
I like hard lines. I've always been a hard line kind of guy. I believe in shades of gray. But I also believe that at some point you do get to black.
Your choices don't sound particularly appealing I'll admit - I tend to go with the simply never forgetting it move.
Boris, ever heard the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin?" Seems like that's where your last paragraph ended up.
Some actions are never forgivable. But people can be. People change; the past (and the fact that something happened) can't. Leastaways that's the way I think about it.
So to rephrase Gui's #1, I'd say "There are a class of actions which can not be forgiven. However, the people who commit those actions can, with great difficulty and much time, sometimes be forgiven."
Do you ever really forget the things you've forgiven yourself for? It seems like all of your actions contribute to your mental landscape, and 'unforgivableness' is just a measure of how cataclysmic and permanent the changes are.
Or you could define forgiveness as accepting the consequences of the past while being open to new circumstances, in which case being unforgiving in the long term is irresponsible and possibly self destructive.
That's not really right. I mean, yes, all of my actions become a part of my mental landscape. But the unforgivable status isn't given by what occurs as a result of my actions - things are forgivable or not based on principle. For example, one of the things I consider unforgivable was just an unfair comment to a teacher in 7th grade. I'm sure he forgot about it within a week. It didn't change anything. But it was not an acceptable thing to say and I don't believe that action can be forgiven.
My version of forgiveness isn't about accepting the past and being open to the future. I'm fine with those. I think Mel was closest with her distinction between forgiving a person who did something unforgivable and forgiving the unforgivable action itself.
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