The statement, “I need to feel hope” captures a key yearning of not only people with cancer, but all everyone. Hope keeps us going through unimaginable pain and debilitation.
And yet there is a time when giving up hope is prerequisite for healing. It is when we give up hope for undoing damage that has already been done.
“Forgiving means giving up all hope for a better past,” said Jack Kornfield, PhD, in his soft, melodic voice yesterday at the “Science and Practice of Forgiveness” seminar, part of the Greater Good Science Center’s “Science of a Meaningful Life” series. The quotation, alternately attributed to the Lakota Sioux or Lily Tomlin, is a core concept of forgiveness: that one look forward rather than backward.
As Dr. Fred Luskin of the Stanford Forgiveness Project and author of Forgive for Good said at the seminar, we cannot change what has happened, but we can change how much power we allow it to wield over us.
“This is so simple, but it’s not easy,” Luskin conceded. This is why he teaches classes and workshops on forgiveness, and has worked with groups of wounded individuals from Irish Catholics and Protestants to divorcees, and will soon be training seven educators from Sierra Leone.
Self-forgiveness is just as important, or perhaps more important, than forgiving others’ transgressions. I saw my friend, therapist Susan Halpern, author of The Etiquette of Illness at the seminar yesterday, and recalled what inspired her to write her book: regret over not being more present for and supportive of a neighbor who was very ill. She not only forgave herself, she created out of her regret a lasting gift to the world.
As Luskin said, humans are imperfect. Being hurt is just part of life, a normal manifestation of living. There is and always has been murder, selfishness, greed.
I would add that friends, family, colleagues, and strangers will always “blurt” horror stories to people with cancer. But if we can say, as so many of us do, the statement from my book, “It’s okay to say or do the ‘wrong’ thing”, we offer forgiveness in advance, letting people know that we accept their limitations. We do so in exchange for their caring and very presence, which we so badly need.
More on forgiveness in coming posts…
Always hope,
Lori
Author of Help Me Live: 20 things people with cancer want you to know
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