BLOG POST 14: The Book of Forgiving by Desmond Tuttu

If you are going through any kind of hurtful relationship or have been through one and feel lost out of guilt and anger, then this book about forgiveness might help. Desmond Tuttu has explained forgiveness to it's roots. He has also given solutions to help you forgive if you are confused about how to do it. This blog consists of the best and my favourite lines I have picked from his book. Please read the book for a more deeper understanding.

From THE BOOK OF FORGIVING BY DESMOND TUTTU,

Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world. People don’t come into this world hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition. Children do not dream of growing up to be rapists or murderers and yet every rapist and every murderer was once a child.

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew. Forgiving does not require that we carry our suffering in silence or be martyrs on a cross of lies. Forgiveness does not mean that we pretend things are anything other than they are. I am hurt, we say. I am betrayed, we announce. I am in pain and grief. I have been treated unfairly. I am feeling ashamed. I am angry this has been done to me. I am sad and I am lost. I may never forget what you have done to me, but I will forgive. I will do everything in my power not to let you harm me again. I will not retaliate against you or against myself.

Often we wonder, How do we forgive if there has been no apology or explanation for why someone has hurt us so? How do we think of forgiving when we feel the person has not done anything to “deserve” our forgiveness? Where do we even start? Forgiveness requires a lot of effort for most of us. It is best to break our forgiving down into bite-size pieces, and begin from wherever we are standing. Tell your story for as long as you need to. Name your hurts until they no longer pierce your heart. Grant forgiveness when you are ready to let go of a past that cannot be changed. Reconcile or release the relationship as you choose.

Aren’t some people beyond forgiveness? Aren’t some people just evil, just monsters, and aren’t such people just unforgivable? To relegate someone to the level of monster is to deny that person’s ability to change and to take away that person’s accountability for his or her actions. Forgiveness is simply about understanding that every one of us is both inherently good and inherently flawed. Within every hopeless situation and every seemingly hopeless person lies the possibility of transformation.

Telling your story to the one that hurt you or whomever you trust is the foremost step to forgiveness.  When you tell your story to the one that caused you harm there is profound reclaiming of dignity and strength when you are able to stand in front of your abuser, stand in your truth, and speak of how that person hurt you. This is the quickest way to find both peace and the will to forgive. However, this does not work always as the perpetrator has to be receptive, and you have to be sure they will not cause you more harm. 

In the ideal model of forgiveness, there is an exchange of stories, and if done with total honesty and no justification or rationalization on the part of the perpetrator, there can be great understanding and healing between the two people. If there is no one you trust, then you can always write your story down in a letter to the person who harmed you, even if it is a letter you cannot send. When we tell the truth about our hurt and our loss, we lessen the power it has over us.

No villain has ever thought he was a villain. Hitler, Stalin, every terrorist and serial murderer—every person has a reason why his or her actions were justified. There is no guarantee the person who harmed you will acknowledge that what they did was wrong, yet there are ways to increase the likelihood that telling the story will lead to resolution rather than more conflict. If it is possible, you can begin by affirming your relationship with this person and its importance to you. What has this person meant to you? How have they helped you, not just harmed you? If you have empathy for the one who victimized you, it is much more likely that they will have empathy for you.

We may need to tell our stories many times over, to many different people, and in many different forms before we are ready to move forward in the forgiveness process. We also may find that just telling our stories relieves a burden we have carried. When we tell our stories, we are practicing a form of acceptance.

The response to hurt is universal. Each of us will experience sadness, pain, anger, or shame, or a combination of any or all of these. When we are hurt and cannot admit our own woundedness, we cannot see the other as a wounded person who has harmed us out of his or her own ignorance, pain, or brokenness. We must reject our commonality. Our suffering, our pain, and our losses have the power to transform us. It does not always feel just, nor is it easy, but we have seen that, with time, great good can come from great sorrow.

Why must we name the harm? When I bury my hurt in shame or silence, it begins to fester from the inside out. I feel the pain more acutely, and I suffer even more because of it. When we ignore the pain, it grows bigger and bigger, and like an abscess that is never drained, eventually it will rupture. When that happens, it can reach into every area of our lives—our health, our families, our jobs, our friendships, our faith, and our very ability to feel joy may be diminished by the fallout from resentments, anger, and hurts that are never named. 

The only way to heal this hurt is to give voice to what ails us. It is only in this way that we can keep our pain and loss from taking root inside us. It is only in this way that we have a chance for freedom. We are as sick as the secrets we keep. Often the initial harm done to us is compounded by our own shame and silence about what we have suffered.

“People must be encouraged to feel to the fullest, no matter how uncomfortable. ... People need space to be weak and vulnerable for a time before they can become strong” While human emotions are universal, they often exist below our level of consciousness. The emotional regions of the brain, scientists remind us, are older than the intellectual regions of the brain. We had feelings before we could express them. This is often still the case. We don’t always have the vocabulary to express our feelings. The more conversant and comfortable you can be with your emotions, the richer your experience of life will be, and the more capable you will be of forgiving.

A tree must push up against the dirt, the solid resistance of the ground, in order to grow. 

Muscles grow when we apply a counter-force of resistance against them, but first they tear apart and break down, only to become even stronger in the rebuilding. 

A butterfly struggles against the cocoon that surrounds it, and it is this very struggling that makes it resilient enough to survive when it breaks free. 

So it is that you and I must struggle through our anger, grief, and sadness, and push against the pain and suffering on our way to forgiving. When we don’t forgive, there is a part of us that doesn’t grow as it should. Like the butterfly, we must become stronger and more resilient, and we will transform. We cannot remain frozen in a chrysalis.

If you are standing before me, beaten and bleeding, I cannot tell you to forgive. I cannot tell you to do anything, since you are the one who was beaten. If you have lost a loved one, I cannot tell you to forgive. You are the person who has lost a loved one. If your spouse betrayed you, if you were abused as a child, if you have endured any of the myriad injuries humans can inflict upon one another, I cannot tell you what to do. But I can tell you that it all matters. Whether we love or we hate, whether we help or we harm, it all matters. I can tell you that I hope, if I am the one who is beaten and bloodied, I will be able to forgive and pray for my abuser. I hope that I would be able to recognize him as my brother and as a precious child of God. I hope I never give up on the reality that every person has the capacity to change.

We can’t create a world without pain or loss or conflict or hurt feelings, but we can create a world of forgiveness. We can create a world of forgiveness that allows us to heal from those losses and pain and repair our relationships.

Click here to read - My review on 'The Book of Forgiving'