Changed

I’m often interested in what leads people to read the books they read. I chose to read Desmond Tutu's "No Future Without Forgiveness" after listening to historian Thomas Cahill discuss Dominique Green’s case on the 28 December podcast of Bill Moyers' Journal. Green was convicted (wrongfully, from what I have gathered listening to Cahill discuss the case) of murder, spent 11 years on death row, and was executed in 2004. During his conversation with Moyers, Cahill described how Green had read Tutu's book and had also influenced the other men on death row to read the book. At the end of the podcast, Moyers played excerpts of an interview with Tutu, and Tutu talked about the importance of forgiveness in the healing process. Since I felt I had been struggling with forgivness, I decided to read his book to see if anything in the book could help me, as it seemed to have help the death row inmates ask for and offer forgiveness.

I expected a heavy-handed sermon on forgiveness and the "sin" of not forgiving. (As sick as I am of that sort of presentation, particularly from Christians, I was willing to wade through it in the hopes I could find a crumb of help amongst the dross; that is how badly I want healing.) What I got, instead, was a bit of a history lesson on the gruesomeness of apartheid in South Africa, a glimpse into the start of the South African reconciliation process, and validation of my own suffering. The book stated the importance of forgiveness, but it was always stated in conjunction with other things, not (as it had always been presented to me at home or at church) as the only thing that needed to happen when injustice occurs. Yes, I need to forgive, but I also need to tell my story (even in the face of opposition), because the storytelling often enhances the ability to forgive and heal. Yes, I need to forgive, but I also need some kind of closure (at least) or reparation (ideally); real suffering deserves real restitution. It was the first time I have read a book which talked about forgiveness in terms of both sides of the coin: what the victim needs to receive as well as what the victim needs to give.

Reading the book has changed me, but not in the ways I expected. I expected to read the book, pick out the things which could help me, and come out of the experience more spiritual, able to more easily forgive, and distanced from my pain. What has happened is I have learned to embrace and validate my pain as a way to move towards healing. I hurt for a reason. I need to acknowledge and respect my pain, not shove it deep inside of me in hatred or embarrassment and never talk about it. I have been reminded of the importance of seeking out safe, victim-friendly spaces to express that pain. Some of those spaces may be private, but some may be public, just like the TRC created a public venue for the victims to talk about what they had suffered, and they did not allow dissenters to interrupt the process. I was reminded those who played a part in the injustices may vehemently oppose public disclosure, but that does not diminish the victim’s right to tell her/his story; the opposition would have ample opportunity in some other venue at some other time to tell their version of the story. (In my case, if I tell my story here in my blog, dissenters will need to find their own venue to tell their story; I am not obligated to create such a venue for them, just like the victims who testified to the TRC were not tasked with then creating a way for the opposition to rebut them.) But the most surprising change is that as I have embraced my pain and pondered these things, my pain has diminished. It may never be eradicated; a person who has lost a physical limb often feels phantom pain from that limb for the rest of their life. But where the pain may have been a 9 or 10 before I read the book, it is now somewhere around a 6 or 7, which is a marked improvement. I guess I was expecting to simply be better able to accept swallowing my pain and living with it gnawing at my insides. Instead I am experiencing real relief.

As it turns out, I had not been struggling with forgiveness as much as struggling to swallow my pain. Now that I've been reminded that is not the way to heal, now that I've seen there are real alternatives, I have a feeling forgiveness isn't going to be as much as a problem for me. I've never wanted revenge as much as I've merely wanted to have my grievances heard.

Eat + Pray + Love = Privilege

Between Christmas and New Year's I read “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert over the course of two days. At first, the book annoyed the snot out of me. Here was yet another person who “found religion/spirituality” as a way to handle the pains she had suffered in life. Religion had not helped me deal with the pains I had suffered in life. In fact, in many ways religion/spirituality had made my pains worse. But I soon realized I had to stop reading the book as a way to look for answers for my life. The book was Gilbert’s story of what has worked for and happened to her, nothing more and nothing less. Once I took that approach, I was able to read without getting riled up. Much.

It’s interesting that not long after reading Gilbert’s book I read (this week) “Honeymoon with My Brother” by Franz Wisner: another book about people traveling the world in the wake of relationship trauma and in the process of figuring out who they were and what they wanted to do with their lives. How nice to be able to afford that luxury. You need to find yourself? Completely turn your back on your old, painful life and go live somewhere else in the world for a few months at a time while following your whims. I don’t begrudge them their travels; I merely wish I and all of the stressed, overworked, unfulfilled people I know also had the financial backing to be able to do such a thing. We could use a year or two of living by our whims in foreign lands to heal and figure ourselves out, too.

I saw the romance at the end of Gilbert's book coming from a mile away. How typical. This time “Stella” got her groove back with an older, affluent foreigner instead of with a barely legal, poor native.

Both Gilbert’s and Wisner’s books have something in common: privilege. The insights both gained were deep, of course, but the privilege in both people’s tales was so glaring, it tended to overshadow their personal growth. Let’s be real: the average person does not have a book advance (Gilbert) or a $70,000 bonus and hundreds of thousands in savings (Wisner) to propel them on their journeys of healing and self-discovery in foreign lands. The average person must fit in healing and self-discovery in fits and starts while still going to (or trying to change) that soul-numbing job/university, living in that house that reminds them of their ex, and trying to fulfill their obligations. Most of us cannot afford to push all of that aside to solely delve within ourselves for a year or two. More than personal memoirs, through my filters their books are testaments to the options money and privilege give to people who are suffering a personal crisis.