There is, in the New York Times, a regular column under opinions dealing with various ethical and philosophical issues and I read it because I find myself very frequently disagreeing with the proposals and conclusions offered. There is a subsection to this wherein readers can contribute their opinions as to the issues and I occasionally insert mine when I feel I have something worthwhile to say. The current essay (December 28 2010) deals with the matter of forgiveness. One cannot, in this current world of violent meaningless conflict, brutal official actions, massive greed and corruption and stupidity, horrific hypocrisy, and frightful misinformation and confusion neglect any means to somehow soften and contain and intelligently deal with this wholly human constructed hell. It seems an impossible task and most probably is. But we are each granted limited time in this existence and have to discover and utilize the available psychological tools to make what we can of our short lives.
My submission to the column dealt with my experience with my injured son, Tero Sand, born in Oak Ridge Tennessee in 1964. His difficulties in remaining alive after a terrible accident in Israel in 1967 where he was trying to walk across a street and was struck by a reckless driver who ignored all good sense and standard safety precautions in his determination to speed down the road. Tero barely remained alive and spent the rest of his shortened life as a hospital patient in Helsinki on artificial respiration and unable to either move or feel anything below his neck. While he lived his life overwhelmed any other consideration in the life of my wife, my other son and myself.
This is my submission to the NY Times:
I'm not sure what the word forgiveness implies. When something nasty or illegal has been done what attitude must the victim employ to make sense? Looked at analytically revenge is a form of education for the perpetrator to make him/her conform to better conduct. A large percentage of justice falls into the same category. In other words many victims seem dynamically motivated to become agents of society to make society function in a proper manner. And there is no doubt a successful act of either justice or raw revenge donates emotional compensation to the victim who has been injured.
On a personal basis, my three year old very healthy son was rendered a total quadriplegic on a respirator by a deliberately reckless driver who had done the same kind of thing before. I was not well off and the driver was a very wealthy man. His insurance company attempted to relieve itself of any responsibility and only after a prolonged court case was an award made that was minuscule and totally inadequate compared to the expense and total hospital care necessary to keep my paralyzed son alive for the rest of his thirty year life. My wife and I spent the overwhelming part of that thirty years caring for my injured son completely disrupting our personal lives and professional capabilities.
So what should be our attitude towards this callous individual who never even apologized? Should I spend any emotional resources fulminating over this total bastard? Should I forgive him in any way? Actually I resolved my attitude by realizing the man was nothing in my life before the accident and I saw no reason to expend much thought in his direction afterwards. My wife and I spent our emotional and financial resources keeping our son alive through decades of severe medical crises and giving him whatever he could attain with the resources he had left and that was a reasonably successful effort.
The driver's country (Israel) was obviously influenced by his wealth and connections and gave him a small fine for his action. My country (USA) was totally uninterested in giving me any aid. My wife's country (Finland) donated Finnish citizenship to my American born son in order to place him within Finnish medical care and saw to it he had a reasonable time with whatever capabilities he had left. I did not forgive anybody responsible for my son's loss of a decent life and am immensely grateful for Finland's response. We each have only a limited time to be alive. It is important to make the best of it and not get entangled in the righteous nonsense of justice or revenge or forgiveness.
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I can only tell you it will make some reading it view their own hardships, not a few of which relate to health and family, in a different light. It might even change their outlook.
I understand much better why you would never want to leave Finland to return stateside. I wouldn't either.
Peace, love and tranquility to you Jan,
Jim
Rated.
Your story bores deep. It leaves me to revisit the mysteries of this life. How can there be such a cruel and twisted change in the course of a life? And yet there is and there was, and you have lived it with reserve, resolve, and eloquence and grace. And somehow, just reading a mere slice of your son's story on a page, confronts me, changes me. Thank you.
Bless you Jan ...
I do not believe in revenge. I am incapable of forgiveness in some areas. Yet I cling to a hope for a world that is just. ~r
Though the injustices I've had inflicted upon me are not in the same league, hardly even worth mentioning in fact, I have learned one thing, very similar to your conclusion - only I would express it less gracefully:- I do not understand the concept of forgiveness. Scylla, what you say is something I can only understand intellectually. (Perhaps because my injustices are so minor that it does me little damage to hang onto my ... resentment.) However, trying for justice or vengeance or restitution, or for god's sake simple acknowledgment, only aggravates one's pain. The only option for a good life is to expend as little psychic energy on the perpetrators as possible and just get on with it.
Again, the things I suffered were minor, and I have admiration verging on awe for people like you, Jan, and you Scylla, who live through and with these things and do so while not being obliterated by bitterness.
He started crying, asking how she could ever forgive him. She replied, "Son, I already have."
Forgiveness is something you do for yourself.
Your second question answers your first. You forgive so that you don't waste emotional resources fulminating over the bastard.
Forgiveness is a gift to yourself - it's freeing yourself from the destructive power that someone else has over you.
I believe the perpetrator must first apologize.
I've thought about Forgiveness over and over.
The Canadians are leery of American impaired.
In Nova Scotia a drunk American killed a person.
It was a sad vehicular accident on the highway.
The American fled and was never to be found.
A killer fled Canada and never showed for trial.
Courts and citizens are still suspicious. Furious.
I was given a book with that ''Forgiveness'' title.
It was difficult for me to comprehend the book.
Words were such as`
Atonement. Guilts.
Retribution. Revenge.
Redemption. Forgive.
`
The deceased woman is well-know for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Reconciliation.
Listening to foes.
I respect the Giver.
I still struggle with it.
REpentance? I do Sigh.
The Giver was Peaceful.
She lived in Santa Barbara,
California. She was almost`
One Hundred Tears Young.
`
Rest In Peace. Condolences.
She's Gene Knudson Hoffman.
Once She offered me a year salary.
I turned it down. She ask me to write.
In the early eighties She sent me a ticket.
Thich Nhat Hanh was at Casa `de Maria.
I loved her presence and Beautiful Spirit.
I respected her. I still do too. Forgiveness?
`
I was not able to comprehend forgiveness?
I couldn't take a year off and cease farming.
I wasn't making minimum wage at farming.
Every hoe and pick was dull. Thanks. Sigh.
Powerful notion. Forgive for they no know?
The scribes and pharisees (law-peers) kills.
They torture and jail Mr. Manning in a cell.
Nail to Weeping Willow Tree? O, My gaud.
Your post is a magnificent testimony to your love of your son and your understanding of the need to not forgive an evil character with no remorse or willingness to help.
All you can do is love and you have loved greatly.
rated with love
The rightness of your response to this horrific injury, perpetrated by an unjust and uncaring man, can be found in your son's beautific face. When I look at his face, I know that you, your wife and other son were successful at creating a life for Tero that was fulfilling and joyful despite his reduced physical self.
As to the callous man who unthinkingly caused this wrong, I have found that those with no character and no soul are brought low in their lives by their own actions. There can be no joy in a life lived selfishly and wantonly.
Your triumph is that you
The rightness of your response to this cruel and unthinking man is to be found in the beautific face of your son, Tero. You, his mother and his brother were successful in providing him with a meaningful life which included unalloyed joy and love.
I have found in life that those who have no character and no soul--such as this wealthy heartless man--have lives that are built on selfishness which excludes the possibility of love and joy. When life is over, all we carry is the love we gave and the love we received.
Your son, Tero, was far wealthier than this soulless man who is best forgotten, not forgiven.
Blessings upon you and your birds.
Jim K
Thank you for your very thoughtful essay here. I appreciate your position on forgiveness, as I have come to the same answer after losing a son to murder, but the path I took was somewhat different. I think we all get where we need to be in our own ways and at our own pace. I appreciate how you have taken your journey and sharing it with us. I am also immensely grateful to hear how Finland handled your son's care.
I don't usually put a link in a comment, but in case you are interested, here is the conclusions I came to about forgiveness: http://open.salon.com/blog/sparking/2010/01/19/what_if_there_is_nothing_to_forgive
I can encourage others to forgive, but only because it is our duty to forgive wherever possible.
How does one forgive a monster? One may relegate that person to only a part of the past, and then begin anew to understand what happened. The scars are invisible, yet I notice them at every point of the compass I must visit. I keep letting go of the strings of the past, yet they mark me in ways past description.
Your son may have received every bit of the care he deserved that was affordable at the time of his need. But there was nobody left to look out for me, so unhandily base and marred is the family outlook I had to come out of.
Bless you for being so well adept at handling what he needed and then keeping it uppermost in your thinking. That becomes you most of all. And it is your best defense against the sort of thinking which can undermine one's health and enjoyment of any time remaining.
In the aftermath, we only see the smoke, feel the tears of its passing. But at ground zero, we are irrevocably different than before.
More highly Rated than can be shown
I know that you have been astounded and puzzled by your popularity and the praise heaped on your writing. When you give us essays such as this, you must expect praise. You are one of the best of us as far as use of language and clarity of expression goes.
Wishing you a beautiful New Year, full of birds and absent from any ill that may approach your door!
My initial response, purely visceral, was a desire to hunt down the monster who did this to Tero and stake his live, naked body next to a hill of fire ants I know of in Jacksonville, FL, and sit in a chair nearby and watch until his screams become so maddened I could walk away knowing justice has been served, viscerally.
Rationally I would veto that operational solution because the monstrosity that killed Tero is more than just the driver, it includes the society and the government that enabled and protected him. A monster of such enormity reduces Moby Dick to a bass with attitude and Ahab's obsession with him as high dudgeon compared with the madness of whosoever were to obsess over Tero's monster.
You and your wife chose sanity, Jan, and your dedication to Tero's life brings a redemption of spirit to all who know of it. Forgiveness has no context.
Your son survived this terrible trajesty for a reason. He is a strong son for he hasn't given up on himself. And you and your wife are also strong.
Peace, love, justice insofar as it is achievable anywhere to you Jan.
Forgive my truncated comment from before. Sometimes my hands give a flutter and my computer does its own thing. I had tried to recreate, thinking it was lost.
All my best to you!
though I would say, like others, that forgiveness is something one does for oneself, I cannot claim to understand the horror you have lived through
I agree with you Jan, but I also thought the exact same thing Steve Axelrod wrote:
"But I can't help thinking ... if someone else had taken revenge after his previous incident ... who knows how many lives that might have saved?"
Forgiveness? New age psychobabble, no one really forgives shit like this, and they shouldn't feel obligated to try. Your child was robbed of his life and your entire family was irreparable harmed. There is no forgiveness.
I hope 2011 is a good year for you. x
What really struck me was how people in our world can be so inhuman. No remorse, no apology.
Just reading your post makes me so angry at this bastard.
Thank goodness for Finland.
Certainly I've got some thinking to do today. Thanks, Jan.
As for the driver, I think the person who is able to dissociate so readily from their actions already lives in an inferno.
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Thank you!
This is a tremendous study in the psychology of “forgiveness”, revenge and “justice”, whatever that is. I cannot imagine the emotional turmoil you, your wife and your son must have endured. It is a fact that we each deal differently with situations similar to each others' situations. I have no idea how I might have dealt with your family's circumstance. It appears, though, that there was no justice, no revenge and no forgiveness.
For what it's worth to you, I found reading this essay of yours inspirational, significant, rife with meaning. I found the actions of Finland to be hopeful for the future of humanity, too.