THE STRATEGIES OF FORGIVING AND FORGETTING
The first time that I met Kiefer, who is my granddaughter's fiance's youngest brother, he had a spiral notebook in his hand ready to share with me some of his writings. He is high on the autism scale but at 16 he was able to communicate at his age level with a few restrictions. One of the restrictions is that he is impulsive and if a thought comes into his head that he thinks needs to be shared, he interrupts the conversation and insists on speaking his mind or give his opinion. Sometimes his interruptions have nothing to do with the topic of conversation, but suffice it to say that he has a lot to comment, no matter who is present.
At our first meeting Kiefer asked me if I would read some of his writings. I was astounded by the first writing in the notebook. It was about forgiveness, which to me was a subject that I thought would be the last one that he would have any insight into. The subject was about bullying and how he learned to deal with forgiving bullies, which to a person of limited mental and physical abilities is a daily occurrence. He did not tell about any specific instance of being bullied in his writings but the important subject matter was how he learned to forget an incident after forgiving someone for hateful words, demeaning words, physical abuse, mental abuse, fear after being shoved into lockers at school and other horrible instances that he had suffered every day of his school career.
The writing related to a particular day in which he had suffered a cruel event from a boy at school that not only hurt him emotionally and physically but also caused him much embarrassment in front of a gymnasium full of male and female students. He wrote that people were always telling him that he just needs to forgive the bullies and then forget it. With his limited knowledge relating to psychological strategies, he wrote that he was confused about the forgetting part because it was impossible to erase from his mind the events that injured him so deeply. After several people again told him to forgive and then forget, he needed some insight into the action of forgetting when the event was indelibly imprinted upon his mind, along with the mental pain and the physical pain. He was determined to find out how to forget, which adults insinuated to him was so easy to do.
He wrote that in his prayers that night he told God that he didn't understand why he was supposed to forgive and then forget when he had been so hurt. Suddenly these words came to him, FORGIVE, ASSESS, LEARN and then FORGETt. His insight into the strategy astounded me. He wrote that it came to his mind that first he must as an act of his will decide to forgive a bully. He said that it is a decision that he needed to make, just make up his mind to forgive the bully without feeling forgiveness.
Then it came to his mind that after he decides to forgive a bully that he must assess the situation, think about the bully's objective, the bully's intelligence level, the bully's personality and anything else that comes to his mind relating to getting inside of the bully so as to understand him and his motivations, such as maybe the bully is just plain mean and bullies other people, people with disabilities and people without disabilities. He wrote that assessing the situation brings understanding and will cause Kiefer to learn from the situation, learn not to get around the bully, learn how to react in a kind way to the bully so that Kiefer will win in the situation.
Kiefer wrote that then after forgiving, assessing and learning, the next step is that he would have the ability to forget the bullying because what he will remember is the lesson that he learned.
Kiefer's final paragraph in the essay proclaimed that the way to forgive and to forget is to first forgive merely by choosing to forgive as a decision, then assess the situation, learn the lesson that comes from the assessment, and then forget the incident but remember the lesson learned. So the process is really to forgive, assess, learn and forget, not just merely to forgive and forget.
I learned a lesson from reading his heartfelt essay. When I read about the assessing part, I was reminded of the scripture that says to reason together with God about everything in order to gain wisdom and insight which brings knowledge. Combine that with the scripture that says people perish without knowledge. Kiefer was perishing without knowledge of the real way to forgive and forget. God explained to him that there are two other steps on the way to forgetting a hurtful incident after forgiving the bully. Those two steps are assessing and learning.
It's said that a little child will lead us. The simple little child inside of Kiefer allowed him to do what he instinctively knew would help him, first go to God for His explanation. When you hear truth from God, then you are free because truth makes you free.
Remember Kiefer's formula: FORGIVE, ASSESS, LEARN AND FORGET.
It works.
