Blogging Book Club

Discussing: The Power of Kindness by Piero Ferrucci

Chapter 3: FORGIVENESS - Live in the Present

This chapter has so much in it I won't even be able to touch...

The author had a friend that used to ask people, "What is the most important thing in life?" One day his friend asked her father and his response was, "To forgive." "This man was Jewish, and his entire family had been exterminated in the Holocaust. I have tried to understand how this man must have felt when he realized he had lost her (his daughter) - and with her, his wife, his mother and father, brother and sister, his work, his home. I have tried, but all I have managed, in a value and blurred way, is to imagine the horror of that time, the incredulity, and then the unbearable pain." (p. 39-40)

"And yet this man is capable of forgiving. Not only that, he can also single out forgiveness as the most important value in life. I regard his attitude as a magnificent victory." "It is thanks to this man, and many others like him, that we have not plunged totally into barbarism." (p.40)

The author talks quite a bit about how an unforgiving attitude brings a lot of damage, emotionally, and physically. For those harboring a grudge, the author says they rise "each day to live a life in response to that offence, as if they were still receiving it. Time does not exist in the unconscious: the past is a living present." "Such is the state of non forgiveness: stagnating rancor generating new rancor, and thus blocking vital energy, cramping thought, poisoning life." (p.44)

As my family could tell you, I can hold on to a serious grudge. I am way better now, but there is one thing I know I haven't forgiven yet, and it still makes me pretty angry to think about. I'm trying to forgive, because I hate the feelings that I have when I think about it. Our landlord in Maryland really ripped us off. She was VERY dishonest about not returning our deposit, and made such crazy, untrue claims. It made me sooooo mad! We threatened to take her to small claims, she countered that with an insane letter from her lawyer. That was when we were buying our house and needed past renter information, etc. and in the letter the lawyer put if we would drop the idea of a lawsuit our renter could oblige and give good information regarding our renters information. Isn't that blackmail? Just proved they know they were being dishonest. We told our mortgage people and they said we didn't really need their information anyway. Ugh!!! Still makes me upset and I get that tight feeling in my chest... But, I don't like that something has that power over me to make me feel this upset, that's why I need to forgive and move on. Working on it.

The author talks about the famous experiment where subjects were hooked up to different machines and asked to remember experiences of betrayal. Of course it was no surprise that those that were deemed high forgivers had better health, and suffered less from anxiety and depression. "Every element of a human being influences every other element. Emotions affect the body; the functioning of one organ affects all other organs; the past influences the present and the present the future; the relation with one person influences the relation with another; and so on." (p.44-45)

I loved this thought by the author, "Forgiveness... It is not something we do, but something we are... We have only to give ourselves permission to be so." (p. 52)

"We cannot be kind while we carry the weight of our resentments. Nor while we remain too rigid to ask forgiveness. Nor if our emotions are colored by guilt or vindictiveness. We can be kind only if the past no longer dominates us." (p. 49)