FORGIVE
AND FORGET
An
Unrealistic Ethical Demand
The Didactic Story
How could he? But how could he just forget such experience?
An experience that directed his life to a channel he wished not? Even in his forties, forgetting such experience
was very difficult if not almost impossible, since various events at later moments
of his life brings to limelight what actually took place many years ago and as
well brings back to his consciousness that he was not supposed to be in his
present state, were it not for the wickedness of his malicious uncle.
Michael Woods grew up in Port Harcourt
with his mother who was a single parent. His mother had two surviving brothers,
living at Port Harcourt and Warri respectively. Michael had from birth been a
promising Ikwerre boy (a tribe in present day Rivers State). He was well structured, athletic, muscular,
handsome and above all well mannered. He
was the epitome of what each parent would want in a child. He was the envy of his peers, a paradigm for other
children and a regular reference for parents who had naughty children. Besides all these qualities, Michael was exceptionally
intelligent. His various class teachers were
always proud of him; each hoping he would always remain his/her class pupil during
his primary school days. Michael carried same behavioural and academic records
to his secondary school as he spent each week of the month going from one
school competition to another, one quiz to another; from one school debate to
another and from one international or national conference to another; representing
his school at workshops and symposia. He was as it were exposed to the academic
world quite early in his life; thus he always dreamt and aspired that one day
he would be like the great men he always encountered.
After his secondary education, Michael
decided to work towards studying Petroleum Engineering, being an indigene of
the Niger Delta Area. He had the
intention of doing this study up to the doctoral level; however he was
incapacitated by the financial stand of his mother. He was not discouraged or despondent, so he
decided to purchase the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) Scholarship Form and sit for
the exam that was to take place in Port Harcourt. For his postal address, he
used the office address of his uncle who was resident in Port Harcourt
too. During the exams, Michael did
exceptionally well as was expected.
After about four months, there were pockets
of speculations around the town that the results of the scholarship exams were
out. Some of the selected students particularly
those who did exceptionally well were to study in foreign Universities
spreading across Netherlands, France, Germany and Britain, while the rest would
do their study in the Federal Universities around. Michael waited auspiciously to get his own
result through the postal agencies having used his uncle’s postal address but
to no avail. One of his college friends Benedict
got his result in which he made it, and Michael wondered how he could not make
it if Benedict could. This fact beat his
imagination ‘of course I am quite sure I can always do better than Benedict’ he
said to himself. ‘How come it, that he
succeeded and I could not?’ Michael
asked his uncle severally whether he had gotten any of such letters through his
office postal box; he denied seeing any of such letters. Michael waited for months and never received
his result.
After months of consistent sobbing
over a dream that has been shattered, Michael got very lean and had to adjust
himself, accepting the situation. After
years at home, there was an invitation by his uncle to join him in his trade,
for he was a great textile merchant. ‘You cannot continue this way’ he told
him, join me in my firm and see if you would help yourself and work out your
future’. Coupled by his mother’s
persuasion, he decided to join his uncle.
After a while, he got so interested in the business and thus plunged his
entire self into it and within a short time, he forgot his failure at the PTF Exams. His dedication and creativity in the business
made his uncle love him over and above his other staff, thus he entrusted the
administration of the place to Michael and would only interfere when serious
needs that require his attention arise.
One of those mornings, Michael decided
to go through the business files of the company kept in the old file wrack to
see if he could re-establish contact with some old customers; Lo and Behold!,
one of the exercise books had a neatly preserved envelop addressed to Michael
Woods with the conspicuous logo of the PTF.
The date of the reception of the letter was also neatly written on the
surface of the envelope and the handwriting therein was similar to that of his
uncle. The envelope had been previously opened.
Michael opened the unsealed envelop, Lo! it was a congratulatory letter
from the PTF, dated 12 years back inviting Michael to begin processing his travelling
documents with the German Embassy for studies in the University of Munich,
being one of those who did exceptionally well in the scholarship exams. Being unable to receive the shock and coupled
with a flash back on all he went through that period, Michael slumped and was
rushed to a close clinic by other staff of his uncle’s firm. On his arrival to
the clinic, his uncle could not make out anything seeing the unconscious
Michael, until he went back to his office to discover that the exercise book
that had the PTF letter was widely opened at the particular spot were Michael
was said to have slumped. It was then he
realized that Michael had had access to the document.
When Michael recovered, his uncle
asked for forgiveness. ‘I never knew
what went over me during that period that I had to refuse giving out a letter
that never belonged to me. Actually, I had
a feeling that you were soaring higher than everybody around including my
children and I was afraid of the future and what you would be up to, should you
have gone over there, then I hid the letter out of jealousy. But having worked with you all this while, I
have come to realize that you were no such person and I had personally regretted
why I did what I did. I had wanted an
opportunity to make this confession, but since it unfolded itself this way,
please find a way to forgive me from the depth of your heart and if possible “forgive and forget” so that we could
forge ahead together’. Michael accepted his
uncle’s apology and forgave him but it has been impossible to forget the
experience.
How could he? But how could he just forget such experience?
An experience that directed his life to a channel he wished not? Even in his forties, forgetting such event
has been very difficult if not impossible, since every hour of the day and
every event of his life calls to his consciousness that he was not supposed to
be in his present state were it not to be the strong heartedness and irrational
act of his malicious uncle. Granted that
he has forgiven his uncle with no intention to retaliate on any account, it is
impossible to forget the experience inasmuch his memory is functional. In other word, the ethical demand of forgiving
and forgetting at the same time would be very unrealistic for Michael and his
likes.
It is because it is yet not very
glaring to most Nigerians and all who consistently use such phrases as ‘forgive
and forget’ especially those who demand that the offended forgets instantly and
not over time that I decided to reflect on the unfeasible and unrealistic
nature of the demand exposing as it were what it entails to forgive and what it
would take to forget an experience. I
feel such reflection is apt considering the general theme of this edition of
the Insight Magazine which is Reconciliation. A right notion of what
forgiveness entails would help us not make the extra demand of asking people to
forget. Such knowledge would also go a
long way to stimulate and catalyze genuine reconciliation process in our
society. Michael’s true life story which
is quite apt is aimed at making this point vivid, clear and comprehensible.
Forgiveness
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Forgiveness is simply defined as the act of pardoning somebody for a mistake or wrongdoing. It involves accepting the sincerity of
penance, sorrow and regret expressed over a grievous personal offence, letting
go the wrongs of people and overlooking their inability to meet up to our
human expectations. Forgiveness is an
act and an expression of love between two persons; the offender and the
offended, the one who is hurt and the one who hurts the other. It implies an elimination and abrogation
of a debt to be paid or an obligation to be carried out. Furthermore it implies averting from
revenge, retaliation and vengeance; treating the offender in subsequent
time in an unbiased way, not counting on the hurt of the past. Medical analysis show that forgiveness fosters
individuals to enjoy low or normal blood pressure, a strong immune system
and a drop in the stress hormone circulating in one’s blood. Forgiveness
is generally seen as a transcendental and super-human quality, not
belonging to the essential nature of man; hence the famous line from
Alexander Pope that, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Gandhi on the other hand had earlier
noted this point when he says that “the weak can never forgive, for
forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Forgiveness is believed to be an
attribute of God which is emulated by humans who try through the
injunctions of their various religions to be like God. Almost all major world religions believe
on the forgiving nature of God and as well enjoin their adherents to
forgive. Only few religions preach
retribution and vengeance.
Within
Christianity, forgiveness is an essential demand. The bible as it were contains numerous
stories and events where an individual, group of individuals, or even an
entire nation offend God and after a while most often preceded by acts of
reparation, God is said to have forgiven.
The parable of the prodigal son appropriately depicts the forgiving
nature of God. God’s forgiveness is
anthropomorphically assured when he is said to have averted his anger and
withdraws the punishment he had earlier intended to impose on those who
offended him (cf. Jonah 3: 10; 2 Sam 12:13). In the Catholic Church, the forgiveness
of God is sacramentally made manifest through auricular confession, whereby
the priest listens to the commissions and omissions of a penitent, and
through the authority granted by the Christ himself absolves the individual
from his sin.
Forgetting
Forgetting
is a mental act which involves memory and consciousness. Every memory process
includes encoding, storage and retrieval. Encoding refers to the initial perception and registration
of information. Storage is
the retention of encoded information over time. Retrieval refers to the processes involved in using these stored
information. Forgetting therefore would be the inability of the mind to retrieve
stored information. Succinctly put, it is
simply the loss of information over time. Psychologists
have noted that individuals recall information better soon after learning
it or having an experience than after a very long delay. Naturally, encoding and
storage of information is intensified unconsciously when we are offended by
the other and when our ego is hurt. An understanding of the antithesis of
forgetting would be necessary in understanding forgetting, in other words
using via negativa. ‘Remembering’ the antithesis of
forgetting is a mental activity that is essentially a case of reporting
past facts by a process of recalling and referring back. In some instances it does not involve the
generation of new memory images. In
other words, what we remember are more or less accurate representations of
the entities to which they refer.
Man is essentially a thinking being and he is so to speak condemned
to think. Thinking in most cases would
involve the recalling of past events which the philosopher Plato would
rightly refer to as reminiscence and just like the empiricist philosophers
would concede; what informs or provides the data for man’s reflections are
his experience, in other words accentuating the scholastic maxim that nihil in intellectu quod non prius
fuerit in sensu (there is nothing in the intellect that was not first
in the senses). In other words, human experiences provide the raw material
for the thinking activity which necessarily includes the act of
remembering.
Many mind theorists make some kind of distinction between
partial forgetting and complete forgetting.
In complete forgetting the mind totally losses the data it ought to
recall. It is a state of total
erasure of an event, fact or datum from the human memory. Complete forgetting is experienced mostly
when the fact, datum or event that cannot be recalled took place under a deficient
consciousness of an individual or when one experiences brain disorder. Partial forgetting takes effect when the
mind cannot adequately recall something at the exact point when such
recalling is aptly demanded. It is a
partial erasure of an event, fact or datum from the human memory and is
only reactivated or recalled when the human mind experiences an event, fact
or datum that could catalyze the event that ought to be recalled. Partial forgetting most often happens to
students during exams, as one could know a particular theme, have it at the
tip of his fingers only to forget it right inside the exam hall, but
recalls it once he leaves the hall or refers back to his texts. Most times, human experiences that touch
our being and affect our ego rarely undergo complete forgetting, since they
take place in our full conscious state. These experiences are called back
to our minds when events that catalyze its recalling are proximate to the mind. In Michael Wood’s case, events that could
catalyze the recalling of his experience would among others be: When he
sees his old friends he knew he was better than during his college days doing
well in the academic world; when he remembers he would have been better off
abroad practicing his dream profession etc.
Psychologists advocate
essentially for recalling or consistent retrieval of information from the
memory. They note that in certain existential
situations, individuals try to impose on themselves a will to forget an
experience. Sigmund Freud says this is repression and he considers it a
psychological protective mechanism by which people protect themselves from
threatening thoughts, blocking them out of the conscious mind. However, Freud does not advocate for
repression. According to him, repressed memories may continue to
unconsciously influence people’s attitudes and behaviours and may result in
unpleasant side effects, such as unusual physical symptoms and slips of
speech. Consequently, it is not the
best of options to repress or forget an offence against you, since man is
by nature a thinking and recalling being.
The question becomes: ‘How then can we forgive as Christians and
forget?’ The answer thus would be: We
cannot forgive and forget instantly; rather we can forgive and carry out a
more realistic task other than forgetting.
The Realistic Ethical
Demand
Some might hold since we need not
forget a painful experience or hurt from our neighbour, the option therein
would be to condone acts that were ab
initio offensive to us. It is
not necessary to condone with an act in order to forgive aptly or in order
to free ourselves and our offender, hence the popular saying “hate the sin
and not the sinner”. Other options hold that we overlook every situation in
life, whether detrimental to us or not, on the ground that such would
reduce stress and so much reflection on those who hurt us. However this might not still be the best
option, since appropriating such option to ourselves would make us a people
that are unable to make choices and preferences, not knowing what is good
for us at each point of our lives.
Applying this option to forgiveness would rather make us have a confused
approach to life, as nothing would neither hurt us nor please us. Every thing would be at the same pedestal. This is not the best option too.
In other words, it is not so
necessary to forget a painful experience, or condone an act or be
indifferent to the way people relate with us and the things they do to us
for us to aptly forgive. In fact the
act of reminiscence, the fact of recalling to one’s mind an offence by the
other or an occasion in which we were hurt, makes forgiveness a sacrificial
act and one that worth to be called divine.
God does not forget our sins for he is omniscience. He remembers all our sins; for if God
were to forget, then the fact of forgetting or loss of memory becomes a
limitation on the part of God. God
remembers our sins yet he forgives all our offences. In other words the wonder in the act
forgiveness is that one’s offence stares at you regularly in the face,
perturbs your heart and feeling, yet you make a space in this same heart to
forgive the offender. The fact that
I remember your evil yet I put it aside and relate normally and freely with
you is the in-thing in forgiveness. That the hurt you caused me does not in
anyway affect my relationship and my view about you is the essence of forgiveness. That you
claim to be my enemy through your actions, yet I do not allow your actions
to influence what I ought to do to you as an image of God, is the quiddity of forgiveness. Jesus exemplifies this concept of
forgiveness, when on the cross, he forgave those who were killing him and
even imposed ignorance on them when they had earlier claimed awareness and
knowledge of what they were doing. (cf. Luke 23:34) Christ needed not to forget the
experience of his executioners before he could forgive. They were in the very act and the acts
were glaring and painful to Jesus, yet in that anguish and pain he had to
forgive without necessarily forgetting at that point. Such awareness of
offence and the longing to forgive in such instance is the substance of forgiveness. In other words forgiveness that merits
the ascription forgiveness would involve a gracious remembering of the
offence of the other.
Forgiveness does not involve a literal forgetting. The forgiver remembers
the true and painful parts of an experience to be forgiven, but without the
embellishment of angry adjectives and adverbs that stir up contempt.
Doing this, one would discover
that forgiveness is a choice. A step
by step process for resolving anger and restoring hope, helping you and the
other to make peace with your past, present and get on with life. Forgiveness here would imply healing
others and yourself of your past unpleasant experiences. With this one
discovers that forgiveness is an offshoot of love, a gift given freely to
those who hurt us. People cannot be
forced to forgive nor even persuaded to forgive, rather it has to come from
the depth of one’s heart. Thus one
who does not love much cannot forgive.
Hence McGrill says: “there is no love without forgiveness and there
is no forgiveness without love.” It
is only when one has abundant love and appreciates the gift of the other
can such a person forgive in the right way.
This right way is what I term the feasible ethical demand on forgiveness. The right way is nothing other than LETTING GO. Letting go would imply forgiving without a
notion of retribution either from you as the offended or even from God who
is the advocate of the just.
Forgiveness here does not abrogate the recalling of the event that
prompted the forgiveness. Thomas
Szasz, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York
had earlier supported this realistic position when he said: “The stupid
neither forgive nor forget, the naïve forgive and forget, only the wise
forgives but do not forget.”
Final Remarks
Inasmuch we are humans, we cannot
but keep remembering and inasmuch we are Christians, we cannot but keep
forgiving. Juxtaposing the two
states in us as rational Christians, we discover that we would have to
forgive but not forget since our memory has to be functional. There is a need for us to always recall
our past experiences with people so that we can make amends for the future
especially avoiding meting out such treatment to others and for progress to
be made in our lives. To do this in
an admirable way, Jesus would have to our model of forgiving and letting
go. In other words persons like
Michael Woods need not forget such experiences of their life, if not for
any other thing, at least so as not to do same to the younger generation or
to others. Thus the ethical demand in our contemporary time would have to
change since we cannot but always remember.
Hence in calling people to forgiveness, we should make a more
feasible and realist demand which has to entail forgiving and afterwards
letting go. Consequently, we should henceforth rather say ‘Please forgive and let go’.
IBEKA
VALENTINE, cmf.
Spiritan
International School of Theology, Attakwu – Enugu.
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