Because some actions that cause someone pain, whether physically or mentally, such actions are considered wrongdoings that are difficult to forgive. Even though this matter may not be against the law, there will still be people in society who will judge whether that action is wrong or not. This is because people like to set rules for others to follow. Even if they don’t have to be exactly right, they have to be pleasing, like many things in our Thai society. This makes forgiveness a difficult matter.
Sarah Montana, an author and actress known for films like Love to the Rescue, A New Year’s Resolution and If I Only Had Christmas, gave a TEDxLincolnSquare talk about the value of forgiveness. Although it’s hard to do in real life, it’s not impossible, and how forgiveness can make our lives a lot happier. Her talk isn’t a slogan or a cult, it’s an invitation to learn more about forgiveness.
“I am seeking the vision of my own soul.”
In 2016, Sarah quit her cushy job to write a play about her family’s murders. Sounds like a great idea, right? Quitting a cushy job to do something that risks starvation. She tells everyone that her writing is just art, but the truth is, she wants to sever all ties with the murderous boy.
“He’s been through a tough time. I want him to know that I’m here, still watching over him.”
Sarah’s mother’s words kept running through her head. Her mother’s concern for the boy was too much for him to betray him. But then one night, the boy broke into her house, stole things from her house, and tried to sell them for money. The boy walked past her brother who was sleeping on the couch, and he shot her brother out of fear that he would wake up and see him. As he was about to leave her house, he remembered that he had left his coat behind. If he had left it at the scene, it would have led him to him. So he circled back into the house, and found Sarah’s mother. She screamed loudly in shock. And yes, the boy had really betrayed his mother.
“I tried not to hate him, but my sadness made me unable to see him as a human being anymore. He was a demon.”
As she entered her seventh year, Sarah was still haunted by the demon that had torn her family apart. She decided to write a play in which he was the villain. She Googled him and, without realizing it, she was drawn into his story. Twenty-three hours a day, locked in a dark, isolated cell, with only a tiny sliver of light coming through the wooden latticework.
“He inevitably became a human again.”
In 2012, hunger and food shortages were rife in the prison. His conditions were terrible. She began to study the violations of privacy in prison. He suffered terribly in pain there. At the funerals of Sarah’s mother and brother, she felt so small. The horror of the bombs he left, they tore her apart. The bullets in the back of her brother’s head, the flesh and bones in the black dress she had bought the week before, she swore it was nothing like her mother. She thought that maybe the pain she had suffered at that time, he was paying for it now in prison.
“The only way to get rid of that child is to forgive him.”
It’s actually a line we hear a lot in movies, and it’s ridiculous when compared to what the bad guy, the killer, did. Sarah tells everyone that she forgives him, and tells him that she forgives him too. Forgiveness is something that society expects a victim like her to do, but no one tells her how to forgive in a real way. She doesn’t let him go. She keeps dragging her mother, her sister, and him into her life. They’re still in her head all the time.
“Did you know that there are 62 passages in the Bible that contain the word forgiveness, and 27 passages contain the word forgiveness?”
Sarah’s husband comes home to find his wife in a state of rage, hysterical, and violent behavior in the house. The funny thing is, he reads the Bible. He helps her find ways to forgive and happily tells her the story. He says that at least it’s not the only way to try. There are many passages about forgiveness. There must be a way that would work in Sarah’s case.
“To forgive someone, we just have to let it go and be like water.”
A doctor told Sarah something. She tried to do as he told her, to act like water, even though she wondered what it meant. Her husband came home, looked at his wife who was trying to act like water, and approached her cautiously. “Honey, what are you doing?” Well, what was she doing?
“It seems like I chose the wrong question. It’s not about how to forgive, but why to forgive.”
Many victims who have experienced what she has experienced think that they have to forgive because it is the right thing to do. She found out that it is all wrong. There are 3 reasons why we can forgive someone ourselves:
1. Think that forgiving someone quickly makes you a better person.
Because forgiving someone, no matter how badly they’ve done something to you, seems like a great thing to do. So if you’re a good person, you should forgive them. This kind of thinking is very wrong. Because from Sarah’s research, she hasn’t found a timeline for anyone to actually forgive. Most people just avoid things that trigger bad memories and then they think they’ve forgiven that person.
2. The victim feels pressured by people around them.
Sometimes, people around us who try to give us advice, care about us, or want to lift us out of bad memories end up putting us down without us knowing it. The pressure from people around us who try to make us forgive whoever did something bad to us so that we feel free and comfortable, even though the intention is good, this idea is really bad for us victims.
3. Think that forgiveness is a shortcut to healing the pain.
Forgiveness is like skipping the pain and suffering, skipping it until you’ve healed yourself and you don’t have to go through that pain. But it doesn’t seem right, because eventually the pain will catch up with you anyway.
For Sarah, these three reasons are not the reasons that make anyone forgive easily and quickly. They are the three reasons that make people look like good people.
“Even if they are good reasons, they are not powerful enough to keep people stuck with them instead of the bad memories.”
Segmentation of pain into subcomponents
Sometimes bad memories are like cakes. You can’t forgive the whole cake for being too sweet, the batter too hard, or the mushy texture. Sarah got this idea from Judaism.
“In Judaism, a family that has been murdered cannot forgive the murderer for the murder, because they were not killed. The survivor can only forgive the pain and loss caused by the murderer.”
She may not be able to forgive the boy for killing her mother and brother, but she can forgive him for the pain, sadness, and anger he caused her because now she is alive and living a good life with a good husband.
“One day, I found myself losing myself in his story, and the feeling that the two missing lives were always there was too much to bear.”
Forgiveness comes when you feel like you can’t carry the weight anymore. The anger is gone, the wounds have turned into scars. When you should think about moving forward, but you can’t because you’re carrying the bad memories with you all the time.
Sarah decided to write a letter to the boy who had caused her such a huge scar. She recounted what had happened that horrible night from her perspective. She told him that she was not okay with him killing her mother and brother, but that did not mean that he owed her anything for ruining her life. She wrote to him, asking him to live a life filled with healing, to heal from all the wounds, and she forgave him.
“I found myself standing alone on a big stage, under a spotlight shining down on me.”
It used to be hard to forgive him. As she walked to the mailbox to send him this letter, she felt light, as if a light was shining on her. With each step she took, she no longer felt the pain from her wounds.
Standing alone, she felt as if she had met a young girl whom she had not spoken to in 7 years. That young girl did not have the same wounds or pain as her. She did not carry the two characters she had tried to pull them away from, and she did not carry the other villain with her everywhere. It was the end of this play. She had to let go of all the characters and go back to being that young girl, to being who she really was.
“My story is always about the three of them. It’s time for me to let them all go, to set myself free.”
Conclusion
Forgiving someone who has caused us a wound, whether small or big, seems like a ridiculous thing that can only be found in dramas, right? When watching those dramas, we often wonder why we forgive them.
But carrying the pain and anger is too much for anyone to bear. Looking back, how much did those wounds change us? How much did they hurt us? And who are we now? Are we really who we used to be and want to be?
If you’re still bleeding from your wounds, it may be too early to forgive. But if you can roll up your sleeves, show your scars, and tell us what happened, it may still be too early to forgive. But it’s not too late to let go of the villain in your story and bring back the old you.
The Real Risk of Forgiveness – And Why It’s Worth It | Sarah Montana
