Last week a man bumped into me on the street. “Out of the way, tutti-frutti!” he boomed, eliciting shocked glances from passers-by. As I scanned for a cop, I thought, “What kind of crazy, Little Richard-inspired hate speech was that?” But the moment quickly passed. The quaintness of this old-school 1950s insult gradually sank in. I elected to turn the other cheek and move on. This is unusual for me. I am typically more about grudge-bearing than forgiveness.
Almost 15 years ago a good friend of mine was murdered. The attacker offed himself shortly after committing the crime, so there was no opportunity for justice.
At my pal’s funeral, a New Age preacher suggested to the congregation of grieving family and friends that it was “not too early to start thinking about forgiveness”. I was stunned, as was the victim’s sister, standing next to me.
We had barely begun to navigate the horror and unfairness of our loss. Now we had to contend with someone exhorting us to move forward and to “let the healing begin”. This bizarre moment is etched in my memory.
It was my first encounter with the now-ubiquitous forgiveness movement. The basic idea seems to be that the only way to come to terms with the murder or rape of a loved one is to forgive the perp. This notion has gained serious traction. In days gone by it was only the Man Upstairs who could pardon and absolve. Now everybody is taking a crack at it.
On a website called Give Forgiveness, viewers are treated to a quote from Joan Lunden: “Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.”
This lovely thought seems to express the prevailing opinion. Regardless of how horrid your experience, you owe it to yourself to forgive so that you can bypass all that pain and anger and resume your life of nonstop chuckles, shoe shopping and umbrella drinks.
In recent years there has been no shortage of high-profile forgiveness fests. Mary Jo Buttafuoco forgave Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita, for shooting her in the head at point-blank range. At one of his many parole hearings, Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, perturbed his interlocutors by suggesting that his victim would have forgiven him by now. (Impressively, Yoko Ono, a promoter of forgiveness in general, has repeatedly said she is not ready to forgive Chapman.)
In 2010 a lad in Tallahassee, Florida, named Conor McBride shot his girlfriend in the head. She survived for a few days. Her father, while alone in her hospital room, “felt her say, ‘Forgive him’”.
On March 7, just over a month after Oscar Pistorius was arrested on suspicion of murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the uncle of the deceased beauty told CNN, “I would like to be face to face with him [Pistorius] and forgive him, forgive him [for] what he’s done and that way I can find most probably more peace with the situation but tell him face to face.”
In the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case, the mother of the victim shocked the courtroom when she told one of the rapists that she forgave him. Though I disagree wildly with her position, I can understand how she ended up there.
Immersed in our culture of healing, and confronted with the sobbing, apologetic 16-year-old perp, she probably felt obliged to say something. But instead of offering to forgive him, how about a little helpful advice, for example: “Young man, terrible acts have terrible consequences. You must take your punishment like a man, and then, when you have paid your debt to society, you will be given a chance to rebuild your life.”
It is easy to blame Oprah for the hug-it-out quick fix, but I think the responsibility lies with ourselves. We have all gotten a little squishy and confused. I suggest that we take a breath and try to sort the forgivable from the unforgivable.
Here is a start: If some drunken man wants to pick a fight or insults your choice of shoe, then by all means turn the other cheek. But rape and murder? Not so much. At one time, knowing that some actions are beneath the valley of the forgivable — murder, rape, animal cruelty — gave our existence a little structure. All we have are our teensy, fragile, tutti-frutti lives. If taking them away is forgivable, then we are left vulnerable, blowing in the wind, clutching our handbags and manbags, and hoping for the best.
–Washington Post
Simon Doonan is an author, fashion commentator and creative ambassador for Barneys New York.
