Why forgiving someone else is about you • Hacker News Board

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#131

Post by munchbunny » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #19

paulsutter wrote: post #7

In which we learn that forgiveness is a suitcase word (prone to useless debate as each party uses a different definition) https://alexvermeer.com/unpacking-suitcase-words/

Aren't those the only words that matter? Anything else, that everybody is clear and agrees on, might as well not be discussed at all...

The activity of unpacking those words is important, because in the process you get to an actual debate and not just people talking past each other. Once you do it everyone involved realizes that they mostly agree anyway, that they actually disagree on something fundamental, or that some people are intentionally clouding the argument to try to make a dishonest point.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#132

Post by asveikau » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

scottious wrote: post #25

As somebody who's struggling to forgive somebody who's wronged me, I find this article to be a bit wishy-washy, like this: > Reexamine your perceptions of life events that have trapped you in the role of victim. well, what if somebody really truly was a victim? What if one's parents have condescended and belittled them for decades? What if one's mother is abusive and drinks too much? What if somebody spent their enti…

> As somebody who's struggling to forgive somebody who's wronged me,

Not meaning to trivialize your experience, but first sentence right off the bat you identify with your grudge.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#133

Post by throwaway_234 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

My former best friend of 30 years turned into a greedy, vengeful, ego-driven criminal and after 15 years of keeping me away from his gambling (addiction) world (friends) he got me involved.

I am not an innocent party as I agreed to do something that I knew was wrong and stupid. Even kept saying such to him and everyone while we did such. When the stuff hit the fan he threw me under the bus to save himself from the cops. We tried to patch things up a few months later by continuing to run our outdoor recreation business, but the only day we were in business that season he stole portions of the profit.

When this all happened I was harsh and judged him.. saying i didnt even know him anymore and he's turned into a criminal. Thus, he won't ever speak with me again as I judged him (lol). The guy started doing some illegal scary stuff and as a friend I was pointing out he's going in the wrong and a very bad direction. Doesn't matter we will never speak again and I know the only way we will is for me to forgive him and reach out. But no he's become a criminal and ego/being revengeful/greed/being right yet he's so wrong is more important then 3 decades of friendship.

People change... him changing and the loss of our friendship hasnt been easy.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#134

Post by basch » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

sngz wrote: post #122

OneGuy123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You caught yourself in a trap (similar to which I also did). Yes, your parents were assholes. What has to be realized is that yes: your parents were assholes and this probably did had a (severly) negative effect in your PRACTICAL life. But what must be understood is that what is done is done. This doesn't meat that you say "my parents are ok". This means that you, on a deep level, realize that your parents have issue…

I'll have to disagree with that. I cut out a bunch of toxic people from my life and moved across the country and I still hate them but people like them don't come across my mind at all unless mutual acquaintances bring them up. I even came across my bully from middle school in a random city I visited, and had drinks with him and his girlfriend that he was calling a retard throughout the whole night and was clear that…

> Do I forgive him? no, especially since he never apologized. what you are describing is not forgiveness. It's called moving on.

Forgiveness is moving on. It is letting go of your negative emotions. Needing someone else to apologize to "give forgiveness" is not how forgiveness needs to work.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#135

Post by woko » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #18

woko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kind of answered the question: revenge does not help the victim. It might feel necessary, but it does not actually help.

I don't know what definition of revenge everyone is using, but if revenge means consequences for the perpetrator, then it could help the victim by sending a message to future perpetrators.

True. I realize that I wrongly assumed that "revenge" was retaliation perpetrated by the victim outside of any legal system.

If I understand right, some people consider that justice is a form of revenge. If the process of administering justice is done by a legitimate third-party, which lets the victim focus on healing/repairing, then I agree that justice will help the victim.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#136

Post by mattigames » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

jakear wrote: post #130

hawk_ wrote: post #2

While law doesn't have place for revenge in a civilised society and rightly so, the need for revenge/retribution I suspect is quite innate. It's healthy to try to forgive but it's quite difficult, almost like you can't fool yourselves into thinking you aren't hungry.

> you can't fool yourselves into thinking you aren't hungry Interesting take. Friends of mine who grew up in poverty would tend to disagree - from what I’ve heard it becomes very natural to ignore hunger to the point of it going away entirely. This is more or less the only way to have a semi-pleasant life, given you won’t be at a healthy nutrition level regardless.

Long time ago I went by without eating a few days, your body stops nagging you for food so much, peak hunger is about 24 hours later and then slowly but steadily you feel it less strongly, it never truly goes away, just less powerful.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#137

Post by viburnum » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

The forgiveness instructions in the article are very detailed and tie together many current popular ideas. Some people really like complicated systems, so maybe having so much to do helps them by crowding out the bad feelings that cause suffering. Another approach is to decide that being the judge is no longer your job, and to simply stop caring. It can be hard because caring about the injustice to done to you often reflects your best values: kindness, fairness, compassion. To turn off the judge in your brain can feel like you’re abandoning your values. But forgiveness is actually work, and you have to ask yourself if it’s one of those jobs that don’t really need to be done. So the trick is separate your values from the work of being the judge, and choosing to keep your values but let other people be the judge. This approach has helped me.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#138

Post by barrkel » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

Osiris wrote: post #128

My therapist has recently recommend "The Grief Recovery Handbook"[1] to me to deal with a breech of trust in my life. I never thought of that as "grief" but as we went through it, it's really put a new perspective on things. The book also talks about the importance of forgiveness and explains it this way: "Since you cannot go back in time to change the past, forgiveness is about giving up the hope of a different or b…

I personally frame it as taking responsibility for your feelings - recognizing that you have in large measure conscious choice over the way you feel and can will it differently - and I think of it in opposition to what I perceive as a modern vogue for playing the victim, or worse, stacking up victimhood cards like they are spell multipliers and using them in a social competition to prove how much bigger of a victim you are than other people. But victimhood, as I see it, surrenders your well-being to forces external to you.

That all sounds pretty political, but everything social turns political above a certain scale.

Forgiveness is underrated, for sure. Take control over your self.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#139

Post by elboru » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

scottious wrote: post #25

As somebody who's struggling to forgive somebody who's wronged me, I find this article to be a bit wishy-washy, like this: > Reexamine your perceptions of life events that have trapped you in the role of victim. well, what if somebody really truly was a victim? What if one's parents have condescended and belittled them for decades? What if one's mother is abusive and drinks too much? What if somebody spent their enti…

I think C.S. Lewis does a good job explaining what forgiveness really means:

“For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear- sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.”

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#140

Post by GavinMcG » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #76

GavinMcG wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to make yourself responsible for your emotional reality, because you're the only one who can consistently influence it. Or at least, it's up to you whether you allow others to influence it. No one denies that people really are victimized. But whether they let that victim vs. perpetrator mindset play out in their other relationships and lived experiences is (with time and practice) up to them.

I do not know what "victim mindset" is supposed to be. Victim is descriptor - something negative was done to you. You don't become victim by looking at things certain way. Nor you do stop being one. If you was robbed, you are robbery victim regardless of what your mindset is. Most of this is about denying that you might be victim of something either to yourself or to others. Plus, people actually really do deny that.…

There are situations where you're disempowered, taken advantage of, or abused.

Some people inappropriately generalize those experiences, and instead of being (appropriately) aware of the possibility of mistreatment or risk, they expect such treatment or interpret all treatment through such a lens.

There's no need to deny that you might be a victim. My ex-girlfriend cheated on me, and maybe my current one will too. But recognizing that possibility doesn't mean orienting my approach to the relationship around it, and in fact being clear about what boundaries/behaviors make me feel safe empowers me. Viewing myself as (fundamentally) a victim rather than someone who was a victim in a specific past circumstance does the opposite.

The article might get it wrong in some ways, but the fundamental responsibility for one's self and one's emotional well-being is still an important point.