Alberto Samayoa

COMM 1080: Final Paper

Professor Jodie Jones

December 7, 2018

Extending Forgiveness and Apologizing Can Change Your Future

Forgiveness can equal a pardon, mercy, absolution, and pity for those who have betrayed

or abused us. All abuse situations inflict emotional and psychological damage and may also

include physical and/or sexual abuse or criminal acts such as rape and murder. These can be

perpetrated by family, friends, people in positions of authority such as at a workplace or

complete strangers. The opposite of forgiveness is blame, culpability and condemnation.

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a “conscious, deliberate decision to release

feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you” —

regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. (Fred Luskin) Moralists and

religious leaders mean the same thing with their advice “Love thy enemy.”

We have heard the advice that “Forgiveness is a good thing” and we have constructed

many catchphrases to describe that. “Let it go, get over it, burying the hatchet, it’s just water

under the bridge, let the other person off the hook, move on with your life…”

Sometimes we think that if we withhold forgiveness from someone who has betrayed or

injured us, that it hurts that person. Generally, that is just laughable. Such a perpetrator doesn’t

care about your resentment or your moral outrage especially if they are a narcissist with little

ability to feel empathy. After all, they are not the person who is suffering.
 As humans, we can be particularly loath to forgive if the perpetrator doesn’t take

responsibility for (or even acknowledge) their acts. They may insist that they did nothing wrong

or that what they did truly didn’t hurt you. We may rail against the unfairness or brutality or

betrayal of their actions and think that if we do forgive that we are “letting them off the hook.” In

our emotional pain, we may want them to feel compassion for us and remorse for what they did.

Or we may be so angry that we feel the need for revenge — a desire to inflict retribution on the

person who hurt us. Not forgiving allows us to cling to our feelings (often detrimentally) about

having been treated unjustly.

What if we can turn the situation around? Our mental well-being might well improve if

we can find a way to forgive. This might be best described by Lewis Smedes in his quote, “To

forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

Forgiveness is a healing process for ourselves. Forgiveness is not for the perpetrator. It’s

not even really about them. Our ability to begin the process of forgiveness can help us to stop

concentrating on what the offender did (or failed to do) that caused us such heartache. Forgiving

can divert our attention and provide a release, so we can stop telling ourselves (and/or trusted

confidants) the story again and again as we stir up the pain each time. When we can stop

“stewing in our own juice,” this distraction can lessen the anguish from the painful situation as

we begin the process of restoring ourselves back to mental and physical health.

Although we may feel the need for a verbal or even a face-to-face statement of

forgiveness, it doesn’t have to be the case. For some victims that feels too much like the

perpetrator can just go merrily on their way or that what they did is acceptable.

There can be another hand in play here. Sometimes a victim was wronged by a person

who feels true remorse — a perpetrator also in pain as they realize the impact of their actions.

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When they feel genuinely forgiven, they can be assisted enormously. They may feel that they

don’t deserve the forgiveness of the person they violated. But by feeling forgiven, they may feel

enough relief that they can allow themselves to “move on” and improve in their own lives.

Many people suffer even more when they are told that they must “forgive and forget.”

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that your pain isn’t real or ongoing. It doesn’t mean that you condone

what the perpetrator did or trust them again or excuse their behavior or that you no longer blame

the offender for causing you harm. It doesn’t mean that you have to be in their physical presence

even one more time in your life.

Forgiveness can be an event that comes on right away after a betrayal or a tragedy occurs.

A poignant example of this spontaneous forgiveness is highlighted in a 2015 movie entitled Just

Let Go as follows; “In the face of tragedy, Utahn Chris Williams made the most important

decision of his life. On a cold night in 2007, a devoted father of four and a seventeen-year-old

drunk driver both received life sentences. In one violent, devastating instant, each faced a

drastically different future. But as Chris Williams sat in a demolished vehicle, realizing that his

wife, unborn baby, nine-year-old daughter, and eleven-year-old son had just been killed, he

committed to do something extraordinary: he would forgive…despite the desire for revenge that

can surface within the dark corners of the human heart — showing the world that hope, love and

forgiveness can overcome all when you just let go.”

For others, forgiveness isn’t an event, it’s a journey, a more deliberative process. Sharon

Washington Risher’s mother, two cousins and a cherished friend were among the nine people

gunned down in a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015. The victims were black. Their 21-year-old

killer, Dylann Roof was a white supremacist. Some of the survivors, including one of Risher’s

sisters, publicly forgave him within days of his rampage. Risher couldn’t.

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 “I was shocked, I was angry, thinking how could this be? Forgive? Who had time to even

digest what had happened,” she recalled. “I wanted and needed people to know that that wasn’t

how everybody felt. Here I am, a woman of the cloth, talking about there is no instant

forgiveness for me. I wanted time to process my thoughts and be authentic about what I felt.”

The most compelling part of her speech to local college students was about the emotional

struggle to find forgiveness. Her message to the students and the world: it’s OK to take all the

time you need. “Forgiveness, my journey of moving toward total forgiveness, has been hard,

lonely and complicated,” Risher said.

An apology is a confession of regret, an admission of guilt and request for forgiveness

from someone who we have wronged. It can go hand-in-hand with forgiveness.

In the article, Go Ahead, Say You’re Sorry by Aaron Lazare, he describes the anatomy of

an apology in four components although not every apology needs all four parts; First, you have

to acknowledge that a moral norm or an understanding of a relationship was violated, and you

have to accept responsibility for it. You must have a clear understanding of the offense and it

cannot be minimized. You as the transgressor must own up to the impact of what was done.

The second component is to explain that what you did was not representative of who you

are. One needs to demonstrate that the offense was neither intended nor personal and is unlikely

to happen again. This is for the preservation of self-concept and an assurance of self-identity as a

member of society or a relationship your morals and values can only truly be explained by you.

The third component is that a good apology allows you to suffer. The expression of

feelings such as regret, sorrow, and shame trigger you to have a change of heart. Sadness and

anxiety help you demonstrate to the person who you have hurt, that the relationship is important

and that you are worried about potentially losing it.

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 Finally, the fourth component is that a reparation of some kind must be made whether it’s

in a real or symbolic compensation. When you humble yourself in this way, the person will be

more likely to accept your apology as being sincere. It will also satisfy the psychological needs

of the offended person and validate their dignity Lazare, A. (1995).

In closing, a proper apology can lead to more in-depth conversations and encourage a

forgiving posture about the incident and the transgressor. As Desmond Tutu says, “Forgiveness

says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”

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 Works Cited

Luskin, F. (2010). Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley, “What is

Forgiveness? Retrieved from

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_is_forgiveness

Muschick, P. (2018) Forgiveness came, but slowly, for daughter of Charleston church shooting

victim. Retrieved from

https://www.mcall.com/opinion/muschick/mc-opi-charleston-church-shooting-sharon-

risher-cedar-crest-muschick-20180214-story.html

Berman, M. (2015) ‘I forgive you.’ Relatives of Charleston church shooting victims address

Dylann Roof. Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/19/i-forgive-you-

relatives-of-charleston-church-victims-address-dylann-roof/?utm_term=.58abe70b8209

Lazare, A. (1995). Go Ahead, Say You're Sorry [PDF File]. Apologies can restore relationships-

but there's a right way and a wrong way to do them. Retrieved from

https://slcc.instructure.com/courses/487576/modules

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