Lisa Hickey travels from Germany to the comments on a blog post to discover that forgiveness is an action word.
♦◊♦
I didn’t expect to like Germany. It wasn’t on my itinerary, just an accidental stop on my way to better places. But I love that I can rent a bicycle right there at the train station; and even though the words on the signs are long and look unpronounceable, at least they have letters I recognize. I am immediately at home among the clatter of cycles on the city street. Everyone bikes. The buildings are sweeping expanses of stone, large archways, and red roofs.
I pedal out of Munich, over rolling hills, and past clock towers. I’m looking for a lake 20 miles south, and when I arrive I’m surprised to note everyone is topless.
The only reason I am in Stamberg, the German city-by-the-lake, is that I was in Italy the night before. I had a rail pass and no place to sleep, and a train with a sleeper car was Munich-bound. The lake water is delightful. The people are cheerful and talkative. I feel like I’ve stepped inside an 18th century European painting and I don’t want to leave.
I thought I’d hate Germany. I didn’t want to go because it was a country I couldn’t forgive. I couldn’t forgive the fact that much of the Holocaust happened in Germany. I couldn’t forgive all the nightmares that caused me. The sick feeling in my stomach every time I thought about it. I couldn’t forgive the fact that I would pray in school that teachers wouldn’t make me learn about what happened in concentration camps. Please don’t let that really have happened. I would crinkle my eyes shut in an effort to block out the images formed in my head from the stories I read.
♦◊♦
Clouds roll in; there is the smell of thunder. The lake people and I disperse to a shanty that sells waffles and ice cream. People are laughing and running. A couple kisses, their wet t-shirts wrinkling around their skin. A few hailstones fall.
The logical part of my brain knows that I can’t hate an entire country because of some unspeakable acts by a small faction of people some 60 years ago. I am a logical person. Most days I am open-minded and non-judgmental. But when I try to think my way into forgiveness, I can never do it.
Yet, of course forgiveness is possible. And the key for me came from a mantra that makes its way around recovery rooms: “Act first, feelings will follow.”
The way to forgive is not to think you forgive someone. It’s not to feel forgiveness.
It’s not even to say the words, “I forgive you.”
The way to forgiveness is to act in a way that is different than when you were unforgiving. True forgiveness is an action, not a feeling.
♦◊♦
Soon after The Good Men Project launched, there was a comment on a blog post about how “women sit around all day and talk about their feelings.”
I was in a tizzy. How dare someone perpetuate that stereotype! My fight response was classic, “I’LL SHOW HIM…” I swooped into the comment section where I had my first encounter with Aaron Gouveia, aka @daddyfiles.
We battled it out. My rant: “Hey Aaron, the women I know talk about their jobs, the economy, the intricacies of parenting, global warming, politics, sex, and every once in a while, moisturizing cream. But I’ve never once in my life sat around with friends talking about my feelings.”
His rebuttal: “Women may talk about all of those things, but in the course of that discussion, they talk about how they feel about each of those things. It’s a different kind of discussion than men have.”
Arguments in the comments section tend to end badly. Still fuming, I stopped talking and took the only action that made sense to me.
I hired him.
That single act of forgiveness brought countless acts of good. Aaron went on to write the single most viewed article on our site. He humors us when we want to have a “vehement disagreement about porn.” He has run the DadsGood section, getting hundreds of posts from dozens of dad bloggers, professionally, without complaint, for an absolute pittance.
Feeling something, and keeping that inside you—that may be a feminine trait. But acts of forgiveness? They are as macho as you can get.
♦◊♦
Cycling back to Munich from the lake, I ride though what can only be described as an enchanted forest. I pop out into an unfamiliar countryside again, become disoriented, lose my sense of direction. I ride along till I see two German men, hear them arguing back and forth in German. The amount of words I know in German is less than five. Turns out, I only need one.
“Munich?” I say, exaggeratedly shrugging my shoulders, palms to the sky.
“Acth, München” one of them says, and points me in the right direction.
I give a laugh and a casual salute, and am on my way.
Forty years of hidden resentment, and Germany is finally forgiven.
—
—Photo Flickr/hiddenhistoryhumanity
More by Lisa Hickey
Beauty, Obsession, Men, and Women
Why I’m Social Media Promiscuous
If Gender Is a Performance, I’ll Take the Part of Female, Please
—
Lisa, I think your revellation of your behaviour when you first encountered @daddyfiles is telling; men and women do not discuss the same topics in the same manner. Also, your withdrawal from the argument when you felt you could not make @daddyfiles change his mind is also something I’m familiar with when I debate with women. I am pleasantly surprised you decided to hire him, very few women would have been able to get past the man’s disobedience to your point of view; I speak from experience here so it is anecdotal. In my experience women enter into debates with… Read more »
Thanks for the comment. I have to say, I used to withdraw from arguments with men all the time. One rebuttal, and I was out of there. So part of what we’re trying to do with GMP is to get people who don’t usually talk to each other to actually talk to each other. Help eliminate marginalization through conversation. And, yes, show women and men both that there’s not a “right” way of talking about things. Even on the most polarizing of topics there needn’t be both winners and losers. We need to find a way into even the conversations… Read more »
Wow. DaddyFiles disagreed with you, and that’s like the Holocaust? I’m not sure it’s very gracious to forgive someone who didn’t actually do anything wrong. You experienced anger based on something someone wrote, and you got over it. That’s big, and that’s very important to be able to do, and many people can’t do that. But, that’s not the same thing as graciously rising above it and forgiving. You forgave him for disagreeing with you?
Is there some immutable list of things we should be able to forgive someone for or not? People often don’t forgive others for perceived slights much smaller. Not sure if there’s some immutable list of things that are absolutely “wrong” and are worthy of forgiveness, and others that aren’t. Plus, I think it’s a pretty common occurrence to justify one’s anger, right or wrong, and then after you are mad to have the only way to stop being mad to forgive someone. But I could be wrong, perhaps that’s not a universal trait. Of course I wasn’t saying the two… Read more »
If it’s hard to forgive countries with a history of genocide, then there are LOTS of countries in the world where you should not go. Visiting the United States, for instance…. Somehow Italy was okay to visit, as if it were a bystander in wartime atrocities? If you restrict your travel to areas that have never seen genocide, you have a very limited menu from which to choose! I think there is a difference between individual and collective guilt. Collective guilt is really simplistic and counterproductive. You can’t hold millions of people accountable for what some of their members did… Read more »
I agree with you 100% — and that was my point — that of course I shouldn’t hold anyone accountable. That logically I knew it was simplistic and counterproductive. But there was still that sick feeling every time I thought about it — and that affected my actions. My point was just that the only way I could change that sick feeling I got about the Holocaust (and therefore Germany by proxy) was to change my actions. I think it’s a lot easier to actually act differently than it is to feel or even think differently when you are stuck… Read more »
The place where we part ways in thinking is that you think the actions taken after the fact need to be negative (revenge, or some sort of “justice”), whereas I believe that taking positive — but still potentially aggressive — actions is actually a better way to get around what you said here: “forgiveness is to give up on the exchange rather than really solving it.” I’m all about solving it. I just don’t believe revenge is the answer. That’s the thing. In my (and I’ll bet others) enraged mind those actions aren’t negative. If I were to be badly… Read more »
E.E. Evans-Pritchard wrote a monograph about the Nuer of the upper Nile. They’re an acephalous society, which means no chiefs or whatever. Clans must revenge trespasses on them. As E.P says, the older guys don’t want to have to fight…again, so they keep tight reins on the young studs always looking for trouble. Thus, says E.P, the violence could be a lot worse if it were not for the reluctance of the older warriors to have to turn out when one of their young punks starts something. Forgiveness is for the forgiving. It probably doesn’t reduce the sincerely held guilt… Read more »
Feeling something, and keeping that inside you—that may be a feminine trait. But acts of forgiveness? They are as macho as you can get. I really do appreciate you reaching out with this however in my own experience in the script of being a man (or at least embracing the macho) forgiveness is a sign of weakness. Revenge on the other hand… You see the thought process is that forgiving (or performing acts of forgiveness) is to “let them get away with it and basically tell them they are welcome to do it again” whereas revenge tells them “they may… Read more »
I guess that’s exactly what I was trying to do with “Forgiveness is Macho” — presenting it as not being weak. The place where we part ways in thinking is that you think the actions taken after the fact need to be negative (revenge, or some sort of “justice”), whereas I believe that taking positive — but still potentially aggressive — actions is actually a better way to get around what you said here: “forgiveness is to give up on the exchange rather than really solving it.” I’m all about solving it. I just don’t believe revenge is the answer.… Read more »
Literally speaking, forgiveness is for the victim. Non-victims do not forgive. Literally, they have nothing to forgive. They may indicate no hard feelings, but not forgiveness. Try, as a thought experiment, being the bad guy, being forgiven by a non-victim. Doesn’t work, does it? As to Germany, they started two of the most devastating wars in the last couple of centuries. Forgiving does not mean forgetting, nor quitting various prudent views and actions. It’s conceivable that Germany’s culture was changed by WW II. The place was pounded flat. Five million of their young men were killed, in addition to huge… Read more »
What’s interesting here is that I saw myself as a victim — to me, actual harm was done by visions of the Holocaust — almost of the post traumatic stress disorder variety (of course, just a drop in the bucket compared to people who were there). But — recurring nightmares, feeling physically sick when thinking about it, replaying the scenes over and over in my head, being unable to concentrate or learn in school, hiding in fear when talk of it started, being afraid of an “enemy” regardless of whether they intended harm in the present or future — all… Read more »
Nice read. I have three little boys and I teach them constantly to “ask for forgiveness” and “extend forgiveness to each other”. If u can’t give forgiveness and receive forgiveness, u can’t move forward. Be it personally or as a nation. Thx for sharing. J
Exactly. And why would you not want to move forward?
The belief is that getting revenge (or they may call it justice) is the way to move forward. I explain it more in my comment below.
“Female chimpanzees have been found to bear grudges against other chimps for as long as 30 years. Male chimps, however, seem to forget in a very short space of time.” (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors – Carl Sagan)
Interesting tidbit. I wonder how big an event precipitates a grudge held that long? I’ve let go of pretty much all my grudges, my momentary fire at perceived injustices notwithstanding.
I grew up in England in the fifties,and the presence of “the War” loomed large,as did the Germans.These days the people who fought us are called Nazis, but….The Germans were responsible for the war,ergo,they were responsible for the world that followed it. But if it hadn’t been for them, I might not exist, because my Polish father probably wouldn’t have met my English mother. And I have to hand it to Germany,they have done and keep doing, their level best to make sure that their children remember what happened and never let it happen again.
Thanks Gabi, awesome reminder of the good that can come out of the bad.
I haven’t been to Germany yet, but I’ve heard a lot of nice things about it from friends of mine. And I had a girlfriend born and raised there, who also told me informed me of the German culture. Despite its sad, tragic history, I’m planning to visit it one day. To forgive is divine. Shanti
Enjoy when you go! I found people there to be among the friendliest in all of Europe.
Thanks Roger. This was very insightful of you: “to forgive requires me to let go of my anger – and sometimes anger is all I have left of the injustice done to me by the person I won’t forgive.” And I know I as guilty as the next person of “self-justified” anger — If someone has done harm than I am “justified” in my anger, and it even gives me a feeling of superiority. It just doesn’t seem like a particularly good way of living. I also think that — again, for me personally — in order to forgive someone… Read more »
Lisa, I don’t know if forgiveness is macho, but I do know it is harder than hell to do – forgive. I’m not very good at it. Forgiveness intimidates me, or something – because to forgive requires me to let go of my anger – and sometimes anger is all I have left of the injustice done to me by the person I won’t forgive. Of course, the rational part of me knows that if I will let go of that anger, I can make room for more positive and productive emotions. Still, I can’t seem to make myself do… Read more »