Whoops! Forgive Me?

I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. Not by choice, mind you, it has been the subject of several days of my conflict resolution class. It has my head all screwed up.

I'd like to start by stating that up until today I have not believed in nor practiced this thing called "forgiveness." The fact that forgiveness seems to stem from religion has little to do with it really. And I know what you're thinking, no I am not "just bitter", this has been a well thought out philosophy. It may be based somewhat on emotion but it is hard to not get emotional about such things.

Here's my issue: everyone has their own definition of what "forgiveness" means. To a Christian, forgiveness is something that you are required to ask for in order to spend eternity in heaven. In Islam, if you ask for forgiveness the other person is required to forgive you (unless you worship false idols). In the secular world forgiveness has been described by the forgiver as a letting go of destructive anger and resentment. For the forgivee however, it means something different-and this is where my issue lies.

It is common for the repentant offender of the harm to ask for forgiveness. Now, are they asking for forgiveness so that you (the expected forgiver) can release this so called destructive anger and resentment? Are they worried that you are carrying with you pent up aggression that could be affecting you negatively? Is the reason for their asking truly for your benefit? Does the Christian who sins ask for forgiveness because they are concerned that they have hurt God? Are these people, who have done something to harm you in some way now concerned for your spiritual/ mental state of being?

I'm going to go ahead and guess that no, that is not what is happening. I believe a person asks for forgiveness for themselves. They are concerned for the guilt, sorrow or frustration that they themselves feel. Don't get me wrong, I believe this is an important step for people; to admit they are wrong and ask the forgiver for forgiveness is the right thing to do. If you have caused harm to someone and feel bad for it, it is completely appropriate to acknowledge this, it is important for the process of healing. A lot of people deserve forgiveness, we make mistakes; we hurt people, we learn our lessons and we grow. In these cases the offender is asking the forgiver to excuse their behavior, to understand that they are just human, that they messed up and they need the forgiver to say "it's ok, I forgive you."

How is it though, that we can have two different definitions for forgiveness? How in one case is it focused on the forgiver; the process of letting go of destructive anger and resentment and in the other it is focused on the offender; releasing them from their guilt? Who is truly the benefactor of this forgiveness? Why is it the responsibility of the person who has been harmed to help the offender heal? Is it even important as long as both parties are gaining something positive?

Help me!!

What is it about asking for help that is so hard?

This question has been brewing for a few days now. I explained to a co-worker the other day that Mason had tried to steal a candy bar from the grocery store. Although I was not asking for advice on how to handle the issue (which I feel I had promptly taken care of at the moment by threatening Mason with serious jail time) my co-worker offered me the following advice: just don't take your kids to the store with you. Every mother knows that going to the grocery store without your young children is like a wet dream. The thought of walking down each and every aisle, without little hands ripping things off the shelf and without the nails-on-a-chalkboard screaching "I want a doughnut!", causes me to melt into some sort of trance like state. Unfortunately that isn't always a possiblity.

My co-worker's other advice: just do your grocery shopping on-line. "Ewwwww!" I yelled." Who does that?"

Now, let it be known that my co-worker is a single man with no children. I can see how the thought of shopping for groceries on-line may be appealing to him. But not me. I explained to him that I have been suffering from, what I like to refer to as "single mother syndrome", since Mason was born. Even when I wasn't technically a single mother I felt (and still feel) that I need to be doing everything by myself. Whether its carrying my groceries from the car while carrying Emma and stoping to get the mail; or its juggling work,school and being a mom, I hate asking people for help.It makes me feel weak, like I can't handle it on my own. It makes me feel like I will then, in some way, owe someone something. I imagine that I have this bank account, a bank account of favors, and when someone does something for me I then have a credit in my account. Now true to form, I can not have anything in this account for too long, it makes me a little crazy. It is this nagging thought in the back of my mind, "I have to get rid of that credit, I need to go spend it somewhere but where? and how? and what if what I do for that person doesn't equal what they did for me? Or what if what I do is too much? Will it drive them as crazy to have a credit in their account? If it does then that's my fault and I will owe them even more for making them crazy!"

I never said I was sane.

What has caused this crazy thought process?

My mother did so much for us. She cooked, cleaned, played, got us ready for school, and fixed things around the house with this sense of ease and glamour. My life is certainly not like that. I somehow manage to do all of those things while breathing heavily out of my mouth and wearing the same clothes for three days. But my mother was not alone, my dad was present too. He worked and made our lives comfortable, so he didn't get to participate in the getting ready for school ritual, but he came home every night and sat down with us at dinner and was there on the weekends to help with the house work, yard work, and forced marches to weekend get aways. So bottom line, I did not get this crazy behavior from them.

Well, where did it come from then?

My co-worker made this suggestion: the feminists!

He suggested that the idea of not asking for help stems from the feminist movement. That women, by wanting to be equal and treated fairly have in some way damaged society's views of women asking for help. I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain to you why I think that's a bunch of horse shit. But I should mention in fairness, that my co-worker doesn't believe it for a second either, he just likes to say things like this then walk away knowing that he has caused me to have a brain anuerysm.

But it has caused me think....why do I think this way?

We as American's are selfish and self involved, we love to think about ourselves and think about how others think about us. Look at how many best sellers are self-help books. We are obsessed with ourselves. So it is not uncommon to think that someone else helping me is weird. This person should be helping themselves, not me; I should be helping myself. I should be selfish and self obsessed, I should be capable of doing all of this by myself without help.

I have another issue however, I like helping other people. And there are a lot of people like that, people that feel good being able to do something selfless; to be able to put a credit in someone elses account and not feel like they want anything in return. I guess I just need to figue out a way to change my thinking about help, maybe I need to think about how the person helping feels, maybe in some strange way I will be helping the person who is helping me???

I wonder if there's a self-help book for that?