On anger, apology, and what we carry
The other day, my wife woke up tired, even though she had slept late. I asked her if she had slept well, and she said she had some weird dreams. It was a long explanation of dreams, and I will not go into all of them. But I do want to talk about this one part.
She said she was forced to fill out a form listing all the people she had not forgiven. She filled out the form and handed it to the people who had given it to her. They looked at it, gave it back to her, and told her it was wrong. But when she looked at it to correct it, the pages were blank.
The dream was probably a reflection of her Christian upbringing and the idea that we are supposed to forgive everyone. You know, “I do not say to you forgive seven times, but seventy times seven.” But I am sure that after an hour, my wife had forgotten most of the dream. I thought it was a great thing to write an essay about.
How can someone fill out a blank page incorrectly?
And that is part of the problem with forgiveness. We are told that we should forgive, but we are not always told what forgiveness is supposed to look like.
I once knew a woman who was angry with her sister. I am sure I probably said some of the things I always say. Maybe I said, “She is your sister. You have to forgive her because she is family.” Or I might have said, “You only have so long to live. You cannot stay angry forever.” Or maybe I said something else. I honestly do not remember.
Then she told me why she was so angry. Years earlier, her mother had become very sick and was possibly dying. The woman went to visit her, but her sister, who was caring for their mother, would not allow her to see her because she needed rest.
Then their mother died. And she would never see her again.
When she finished telling me the story, I literally said, “That’s unforgivable.”
Again, I said, “That’s unforgivable.” I remember it clearly.
There was my righteous indignation. I had lost my own mother, along with other family members and friends, and I understood immediately how terrible that would be. I had been telling her that she should forgive until I heard what happened. Then I joined her in condemning it.
And some things do feel unforgivable.
We often say that forgiveness does not mean forgetting, and I believe that is true. We cannot erase what happened. We cannot pretend the hurt was smaller than it was. We cannot always return the relationship to what it had been before. But if that is true, then what exactly are we doing when we forgive?
Years ago, I owned a pizza restaurant for children. We had skee-ball and kids’ games, and families would come in to look at the party area before booking birthday parties. One day, a couple came in to see the place. They sat down and ordered a beer. I poured it, and there were things floating on top. Luckily, they still booked the party, but I was not happy.
I immediately called my representative from the beer company. He did not answer, so I left a message. Then I called again and left another message. A week passed, and he continued ignoring me. But when the company came to deliver more beer, I told them I needed to see my representative. Eventually, he showed up. I told him what had happened, and after ignoring me for weeks, he tried to sell me more beer. Like this was okay.
Well, I had some extremely choice words for him.
They were not nice words. Not even close.
Also on this day, we had a program where children with special needs came in and folded pizza boxes for us with their teachers. They were out there working, and I was in the back, red-faced and cussing at this man, losing my mind. I am a big man, and I do not usually get angry, but this was a scene to be seen.
After he left, he sent someone to clean the beer taps because it was his job. Then the man cleaning them asked me to sign paperwork. The paperwork said he had serviced them at that moment and also during the previous three weeks, even though he had not been there. So I got rid of that distributor and went with the competition. This was to my detriment because everyone only loves the beer they want. So later, I began buying beer from that company again. The business problem had passed, but I had not forgotten the man.
We sometimes think our anger is punishing the person who hurt us. But they may not know we are angry. They may not lose any sleep over it. They may have gone on with their lives while we continue replaying the event and keeping them alive in our minds. That does not mean our anger was never justified. It could be. But justified anger is still something we carry, probably much longer than the person who caused it.
One day, I was talking to someone about forgiveness. My favorite line is, “When you don’t forgive, you only hurt yourself.”
Then I heard myself.
I thought, I need to forgive that man.
So I called him and asked him to meet with me. We sat down, and I apologized for the way I had spoken to him. He began trying to explain himself. I could feel myself almost returning to Crazy Al.
Almost.
Then I stopped. “No,” I said. “I do not need you to explain yourself. I just want to say I am sorry. I was unprofessional.”
He looked at me and asked, “What do you want?” He asked this because the beer companies gave restaurants promotional items, so perhaps he thought I wanted something: signs, glasses, discounts, or some other favor.
“I do not want anything from you,” I said. “I just want you to accept my apology.”
And that was it.
I did not need him to admit that he had ignored me. I did not need him to agree that the company had handled the problem badly. I did not need him to give me anything or make the situation fair. Those things may have been true. But my apology was not a negotiation. Forgiveness, true forgiveness, never is.
I had gone there thinking I needed to forgive him, but I also needed to apologize for the person I had become in that moment. I had lost my temper, and I had treated him in a way I was ashamed of. I had done it in front of people I would never have wanted to see me that way.
It is not who I am, but it was who I was.
I cannot undo that.
Honestly, he did not have to explain himself, forgive me, respond the way I wanted, or even accept it. And I am not sure he did accept it. I only wanted to do my part. That was enough for me. Afterward, I did not think of him in the same way. The situation had not disappeared. I still remembered what happened. But I did not have the burden of thinking about him anymore.
And then there was the woman and her sister. When she first told me what happened, I called it unforgivable. I still understand why I said it. Her sister had taken away something that could never be returned.
Ever.
But today, she has forgiven her.
I do not know exactly what happened. I do not know whether anyone apologized, what changed them, or whether they simply decided that they had already lost enough time and forgave one another. It is likely that the injury never became smaller. It probably remained something neither of them could forget. But somehow, it did not have the final word.
So why were my wife’s pages blank?
Perhaps forgiveness is not a list of people who finally earned it. Maybe the page is asking what we are carrying. But why are we carrying it?
Not to erase what happened. Just to stop carrying the hurt.
Not to pretend it was acceptable. Just to allow it to pass.
Not always to repair the relationship. Sometimes only to continue it in a different way. Because really, we are just trying to unburden ourselves.
Albert Jr.
Author of The Nature Within Us
Leave a Reply