Things Worth Remembering: Why Forgiveness Matters | The Free Press

This week, I want to turn to a speech about forgiveness and why forgiveness is so important when it comes to freedom the freedom of both the forgiver and the forgiven.

Some speeches are memorable because of their rhetorical power. Others stick with you because of the depth of their insights. Sometimes that comes with the feeling I know that to be true. Sometimes it s more like I m going to need to think about that.

When I first read this magnificent talk given by Hannah Arendt, I felt both.

Arendt is the political philosopher best known for her monumental 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism. Her speech took place on November 10, 1964 at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. The title of the conference she spoke at Christianity and Economic Man: Moral Decisions in an Affluent Society and that of the lecture she delivered Labor, Work, Action were not encouraging. Certainly, they lacked the wit of William F. Buckley or the emotional force of James Baldwin. But none of that matters here, because of the content of the speech itself. 

via www.thefp.com

I have a problem with this whole concept of forgiveness, though I concede I have not read Arendt’s speech. The old saying is “forgive and forget.” I’m good with forgetting. I’m good at that. And to be fair, I’m fine with forgiving too, if one is able to do that. But I’m not, generally. I can feel guilty for my side of a quarrel, if I’ve done wrong. And I can say “apology accepted.” But the idea is, I think, that it’s a good idea to unilaterally forgive people for wronging you. Well fine, if you can. That’s like saying, “love your neighbor” when you mean that warm, affectionate feeling you get upon contemplation of your beloved. It’s a hard thing to force yourself to have. Impossible for me. You can put up with an a**hole neighbor, for example, even pray for them (which I force myself to do sometimes — “Dear Lord, in your mercy, please make X less of an a**hole”) but the “love” in question must mean something different. I understand there are several different meanings for the original Greek of the gospels, but you get my drift.

But forgetting I get. So I suggest, forget your enemies. Live and let live. Best of all, you improve at forgetting with age. And yes, vengeance is wrong. But imposing costs of the wrongdoer makes perfect sense. It is also impressive how much of politics is driven by the desire, the need, for vengeance. It is one of the great drivers of history.