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On Forgiveness
By Bob Murray, PhD
I remember some few years ago watching while some neighborhood kids used our driveway in Westchester County, NY, as a sled run. Their sled was made of cardboard fashioned from a box. Sledding down the driveway was their winter game. In summer they came to play with our dog Biscuit.
In summer the game ended when Biscuit got tired and unceremoniously sat on one of them-usually the smallest, a girl of four. In winter it ended when the "sled" disintegrated and they fell off and tumbled into the trees on either side of the drive.
But on this particular day the sled was still in tact and the laughter was still loud. Biscuit and I watched them from our small front verandah as over and over again the three of them climbed aboard the cardboard sled and took off down the slope. I don't know what was going on inside my companion and friend's canine head or what kept him so fascinated by the kids' antics. Researchers tell us that dogs think far more thoughts than we used to think they thought. Unusually for him he made no attempt to join in the sport, just watched, as I did.
My thoughts were of guilt and innocence. You hear the laughter of children and you're struck by the innocence of it. The uncomplicated peeling, rippling staccato of it. The screams and the laughter; the pretend danger of the pretend precipitous slope. Innocence uncomplicated by "truth." Ah.
Later, when they're older, when they're seven or eight, the laughter will become more complex, less innocent, more "knowing". Truth will become something external, imposed. Guilt will begin to creep into the mix. Oughts and shoulds will replace cans and wills. They will discover shame. Crying will not be for comfort but for relief from pain.
We use guilt and shame to control because we fear freedom. We don't have time for their freedom, or for our own. Time must be taken up doing "useful things"--working, studying, chores and bores. We take away the right to be children from them, and from ourselves. We see the driveway as a driveway with snow on it. We see the sled as a broken box.
But why should this be so? Oh, I know, you can say that the brains of young children and we grown-ups work differently and that we have a firmer grasp of reality than they do. Of course you know that this is nonsense and that our reality is just as subjective as theirs, just differently subjective. We see our reality of pain and death as "real:" young kids see a wooden leg and imagine a real limb will grow back. They think magic is real, we "know better" even as we pray!
Our reality leads us to laugh at pain--Jerry hitting Tom on the head with an iron, a fat woman slipping on a banana skin. This just increases our guilt because we know that a real Tom would be wounded and in reality the woman would feel anguish. A child's laughter at the same things is innocent--Tom will get up unscathed and continue chasing Jerry and the woman will quickly recover and become a fairy. We tell children not to laugh at other's pain--even before they understand the concept of others' pain--and yet we do. We perpetuate our guilt to our shame. Ah! Guilt.
We are told to forgive others. We tell our children to forgive. It's true: forgiveness is a fine antidepressant. It's good for us. The more we forgive others the better we feel about ourselves. A mass of research says so.
But what about forgiving ourselves? That's even better, bit it takes a different reality. That takes disentangling the control that others had or have over us from our actions. That takes asking why we did what we did, thought what we did, said what we did. And then asking: why was it wrong to act as we did, to think as we did, to speak as we did? Whose reality is making us feel so guilty?
The New York air was bitterly cold and I turned to go in. Biscuit stayed watching, amazed perhaps that those intrepid sportspeople could brave a slope such as that. Amazed that they could dare to trust their lives to nothing more than their wits and their sturdy toboggan as I am amazed at the bravery of clients of mine who dare to whisper, "I am innocent." Who dare to be free of the controlling reality of others.
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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