Forgive

Forgive

Samuel Bird

He sat in the dark behind my shower curtain, waiting. Feeling the small stack of folded papers in his pocket, he meant the words that were in them. Mine was not the only life he was going to take tonight and he wanted the world to know about his life before it ended. In the dark, he felt his pocket. He felt the pocket clip of his cheap serrated switchblade as he slowly pulled it out, grabbed the blade, and released the trigger slowly to make no sound. The area became tight to him and his breath echoed off the shower walls. He had been waiting there in the dark for five hours. Every hour was another chance to change his mind and sneak out of my house the same he sneaked in. Thoughts came to his mind of who would be disappointed, what good he would miss out on, and the terrible damage he was about to inflict, but still, this fiery rage coursed through him. Like a broken computation that kept running the same program, all he could think about or see was his rage and my betrayal. He had trusted me, called me brother, and counted on me, but I had turned away. I had left him in the hellish life we were raised in for a different one. This abandonment left him to traverse this painful landscape alone and without the aid of someone who cared. Between miscommunications, differences in objectives, and honest failings, this growing apart included real instances of us fighting. The last betrayal I committed was most painful to him. He thought I had stolen the woman he loved from him. I wish I could have told him I was only protecting her from him when she came to me with bruises. Marred by a life that seemed to wish him ill, he sat in silence ready for it to be over. He heard the low rumble of my old pickup as he readied himself. Now was the great climax of his tragedy. He waited there, but the door didn’t open. Surely I would have walked in by now. It was late and there was nothing more to do outside. He sat there in silence as his blood pumped faster for what he thought were its last beats. Finally, after a lifetime of waiting, the front door was kicked in and five SWAT team law enforcement officers busted in and began to search the house. Knowing about his childhood, I wonder how trapped and helpless he felt during those last moments. He had taken off his muddy work boots so he could walk across my wood floor in silence. By some miracle, I had been able to see where he stashed them and had called the police. As they led a man away I once thought of as a brother in cuffs, I saw a look in his eye that I had seen few times before, but still to many: The look of murder. They led him away from the home, but not my memories and nightmares as every shower and shadow from that day on was another foe in the dark. 

To trust someone takes courage. To trust someone when you have a history to suggest otherwise is heroism. It took great effort to feel comfortable with someone at my back. It took time to show people who I really was. It took great confidence is someone’s character before I would let them touch me. I had gone through all this with this dear friend of mine, and in one evening it was all taken away. If my greatest efforts to belong and connect had failed so violently, would it ever be possible to ever again? The next months were spent in a wretchedly frightful despondency. Every creak of the floorboards or passing of a shadow in my windowsill was perhaps him again. More persecution by him and a failure to secure my home lead me to sleep with my shaking body caressing a loaded rifle. And if he broke in again, then what? I knew very well that I could never hurt him, but perhaps him not knowing that could give me some leverage. Despite this resistance, I kept up with a changing of my life. I knew there were great things I wanted to do and the life I had would not give them to me. I slaved away as my mind seemed to be close to rupturing in the attempt to comprehend this new life and new self. No stone was left unturned in the effort to chisel anew something from this hardened stone I was. And where there were cracks and dashes, I filled with concrete and kept my shaping. When I was done, I had become something truly remarkable. Nothing special of its own accord, but something marvelous in what it had been prior. I then went about doing what I could to redeem for choices I made, and bad things I could not control, but happened anyway. There was one place that my nineteen-year-old mind knew needed addressing. There was one stone left to leverage up, but I began to doubt if I was strong enough for it. 

I thought of all the wonderful and wise ways I could do what I needed to do, but each were contradicting and necessitated doing alone. I then had to decide which way was the best. I thought back to all the wise insights I had heard on the matter, but that just gave me more material to be confused about. Proverbial to the rest of my life, I realized it was more important that I did it, than exactly how I did. I drafted up a message that was sufficient in its scope, but made sure to convey what my mind and heart needed. I told him I was sorry for what happened to him. Not just that dark night full of knives, but much of his life. I told him I wish I could have given him a better life. I didn’t try to make a defense, but I told him I meant no ill. I then told him this was still true. I told him that this good life I wished for him would need him to start to let go and that as far as I was concerned, he had my blessing. I told him he was forgiven, but also that I wished to be the same. I had put my heart on the line to a degree, and I knew that he could reject, threaten or loath all he wanted. Like any good apology, I left it open to him. Rather quickly I heard back from him. He told me how ashamed he was, that he wanted forgiveness, and that I was forgiven. 

I have a few stories of forgiveness like this. When I share them, people often wisely remark that the person at hand was not worthy of forgiveness. I always commend them for realizing this, and tell them they are right. Remembering some tidings of Christianity, I make it a point that I wasn’t either. Between this dichotomy of what is transactionally earned and what is needed, I realize it is markedly up to me in how I respond. What I knew is that I had forgiveness to give, that he needed it, and that if I could let go of pride and pain for but a moment, much good could be done. People are usually not satisfied with this and will point out it was inappropriate for me to ask forgiveness for angering someone within reason, when they were trying to kill me. Again, they are right in this and that is helpful for me to know. However, this is where I think much weakness is brought into the human experience. Some variation of conflict theory has permeated through philosophy. My Ad Hominem take on it is: My life is someone’s fault. In a perceivably godless universe, humanity looked for their devil and found it in their neighbor. No longer was there a need for demonic possession that could be exorcized, but rather that people are oppressive and no divine source could cast this trait out. While I don’t think it is any better to assume all people are simply wonderful, I also see it as lazy to say they are evil. They are simply conscious beings thrust into existence with stimuli all around that tell them to respond to them, but no clear way how. This is why striving is both a fact and an aim. This is true of this young man. He was not evil, but striving against facts and circumstance. We can probably find some ideas of how that was done poorly, but there was striving nonetheless. When people make their neighbor their oppressor, it removes awareness of how we affect them. It is no coincidence that the most recent and horrific genocides were done by people who, till the end, swore they were oppressed. This is because we focus on the stimuli that others cause, and forget how we can affect them. Being wary of this, I looked at what my actions had done, and what they could do. This assumption of responsibility gave me power. This was no oppressive power over this young man, but power over myself and reality. I was no trembling child, but a shaken man who was willing to make things right. This sense of control over oneself and one’s circumstances has again and again been shown to me as the most vital of needs. All of this, because I sought to forgive and be forgiven. 

The human experience is not as properly basic as people assume it is, and social interactions, communities, and human relations at large, certainly aren’t. For this reason, most philosophy that is done on human relations is based on less necessary facts and more assumptions than not. This in turn finds philosophers sharing and reinforcing whatever view on the matter they had prior. In terms of this concept of forgiveness, we can build on the basic facts of existence. I am a perceiving being who seeks after value. I have the synthesized impression of another entity that seems to be similar but not identical in other respects. Our will and actions into the world affect the other person. Some of these actions are going to maximize the value they experience, some will be net null, and some will lower that value. Using inductive judgment, they will then use their will to respond to the world in such a way that is emblematic of how I affected them. This may be something I want to change. For example, my concern for them would not want me to have them think existence is a net-valueless experience. For this reason, I might seek to correct the way that I affected them whether it was intended or not. The way causation and consciousness relate is one that is not reversible. I am not able to reverse the gears on my timepiece, find myself in different chronological geography, and act in accordance with the insights from the future with the effectiveness of the past. This leaves me with limited options to aid the damage done, or good withheld. I can bring about different states of affairs in the world to remedy the pain. Maybe I purchase a new item I broke, but not everything is replaceable such as time, trust, and love lost. This is where the combined belief in something immaterial can be powerful. I can let them know what I perceive happened, what I desire to have happened, how my behavior or reality didn’t allow that, and how I find this not preferable. On the side of the forgiver, they process their perception of what happened, realize what they wished to have happened, understand how someone’s seeming actions didn’t allow for that, and realize that that person’s humanity is more important than their failing. 

I think we throw away tradition with hubris and to our demise. Much of ancient myth revolved around some type of recompense for wrongs wrought. This is most evident in the same Christianity I referenced earlier. In their divine narrative, there was a great being who was maximal enough to have started all being other than Himself. For some reason prompted by His mysterious ways, He created lesser and more finite conscious beings. From facts based perhaps in humanity, and largely in this Deity's nature, He found us lovable. From this relationship of partiality toward us, how did this maximal conscious being relate to us? What would be at the forefront of what He taught His creation to do relative to Him. This limitlessly value-obtaining being has given us our own little plot of value. It was clear we would then act against that value and the value of others. This vote against the worth of His creations was the way a being so powerful could be affected by His weak creation. How then did this being seek to respond and relate to humanity? He sought to forgive us. He asked us to forgive each other. Perhaps in blasphemy, some have even found themselves in need of forgiving God. If we take this consequentialist approach to apologizing, and the end result of something is low value, then it is clear that there is still something to be fixed outside of intention. This does not imply fault, but opportunity. While I have probably not been subtle in my partiality to this God who is wholly partial to all, I think this lesson can be derived from those who don’t believe in its instantiation. 

I have many times since realized how my weakness in acting in accordance with my values has resulted in lower value for others. I have even seen how my values were causing people pain such that it prompted me to reassess and alter the very values that undergirded my actions. After the moment of anger has passed and I sit alone considering what I have done. I feel the rift between the concern for them and the desire to not abase myself. I weigh these and understand what each has to say, and then promptly ignore the latter. This thing I consider valuable is intrinsic enough, it outweighs utility. I have had my apology shoved back in my face, had it used as an example of how I alone was in error, and had it blatantly ignored. While I started with the intention of affecting them with the value they desired, I realized perhaps there was something egoist about the whole endeavor. Perhaps in my pursuit to heal broken hearts, I needed to start with the ones around me, but the one most healed was the one that I possessed.