Forgiveness - a response to Derek Sivers

Today's entry is a response to an article/blog post by Derek Sivers, an entrepreneur in the music industry and multiple-times Ted Talks presenter. If you would like, read his post before you continue.

http://sivers.org/my-fault

I'm curious to hear others' responses to this, so comments are encouraged today.

As I read the first few paragraphs, I liked what this guy had to say.  Especially from an organizational management perspective, I agree that it's important to encourage those who work for you by edifying their successes and absorbing their failures.

I've heard a concept called "The 2-Way Mirror" that suggests that the best leaders look out on their company as if through a 2-way mirror.  When all is bright in the company, you acknowledge the successes of the department and respond as if this is the only thing you see.  When the other side of the mirror is dark, you see only your own reflection and respond by acknowledging your own faults that contributed to the company's failures.  (I believe this idea is credited to Jim Collins in his book "Good to Great")

So as far as this goes, I agree with Derek.  However, he lost me about half way through.  Here's what did it:

"This is way better than forgiving. When you forgive, you’re still playing the victim, and they’re still wrong, but you’re charitably pardoning their horrible deeds"

I actually understand where he's coming from, but he makes a pretty big assumption here and carries it to an extreme.  The part I agree with usually plays out in this way: a couple of people fight, or a mistake is made, and rather than saying "I'm sorry," the first response is "I forgive you."   Derek is right, this isn't nice.  It's judgmental, presumptuous, and plain rude.

But this isn't the spirit of forgiveness.  Christians are taught to forgive others multiple times in the teachings of Jesus, but even the apostles didn't get it right sometimes (see Matthew 18:21).  The definitions of "forgive" as it is used in scripture translates to anything from giving pardon to "changing the subject."

This my favorite definition, because "changing the subject" seems the most loving.  I consider myself hypothetically causing pain to a friend.  I come to them in apology, truly sorry for what I did.  Their response: "I forgive you.  Want to go get pizza?"  Forgiveness by changing the subject.

Notice there was no brushing it away, saying "it's ok," or "no problem," because someone really was hurt, and that's not ok.  But on the other side, there was no dwelling on the problem and causing more hurt to both sides.  The response is simple and meaningful. The person who was hurt has admitted that yes, he was hurt, but more importantly he has shown that he doesn't want to get revenge on his friend.  That his friend deserves second chances.  This is the true spirit of forgiveness.

Going back to Derek's thoughts, his post continues to suggest using the "it's my fault" response for every problem in life.  This is extreme that I can't get behind.  Partly because there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to life, but mostly because not everything in life is going to be your fault.  Sure, you contribute to every situation, but eating 2 cupcakes and 1 12oz sirloin last year isn't the reason you had a heart attack.  Hitting your breaks hard when a kid chased a ball into the street may have contributed to your getting rear-ended, but more likely it was the guy behind you who was checking his phone when that happened.

I think this warrants a "tell it like it is" mentality.  Sometimes problems are your fault, sometimes they're not.  Sometimes you have to ask forgiveness, and sometimes you have to give it, and sometimes you have to admit your 10% fault and keep your mouth shut about the other 90%.

For the readers: Do you think forgiveness is a necessary part of life?  Should you admit your fault in everything that goes wrong?  Post in the comments!

Always moving forward,

Tyler


P.S.: I don't have any reason to launch a personal attack against Derek.  I appreciate his perspective, and I think it has great merit, but I don't get behind every word that was said.  I believe in healthy discussions even when they end in disagreement.  If this post came off as an attack, I encourage you to re-read with this perspective in mind.  If it still sounds like an attack the second time... well, I'm sorry.  To you and to Derek.  Will you please forgive me?

Defining Moments

Since I was a teenager, I've felt like my life was missing that one major defining moment. When I heard stories about people who found God after suffering injury or illness, or about people who suddenly re-arranged their priorities after the loss of a job, the first question to mind was “what moment defined me?” When I couldn't answer this question, I started to regret not having one. What defines me? What experiences do I look to for confidence in my choices? For the longest time, I wasn't sure.

Don't get me wrong, I've had my ups and downs. There were times in school when I realized being smart wasn't enough, that I needed to start applying myself. I had times when I ignored my finances until I landed myself in a rough spot, and I had to learn to the importance of a budget all over again. Over and over, I've crossed lines to remind myself where the line was. I've done wrong to the point that it's taught me to do right. But each time, I wound find myself making the same mistakes again. Why didn't those moments define me like they had others? Why didn't I learn?

Usually, I assumed that my Learning Moments just weren't strong enough to be Defining Moments. I had felt sadness, but never despair. I had suffered loss, but never lost it all. I had fallen low, but never hit rock bottom. And as the chain of Whats and Whys continued, I always wondered the same thing. Do I have to hit rock bottom to know what defines me?

From time to time, this thinking skewed my focus. Sometimes I wanted to suffer loss so that I could feel defined. Other times I allowed myself to make bad choices, thinking that once I made enough bad choices I would find my defining moment. In my Junior High years, I read a few of the Left Behind books and dreamed of being “left behind” so that I could prove myself. Luckily, when you're a teenager being raised in a good, moral family, you can only make so many bad choices before someone jumps in to start correcting them.

Now, it's probably been a decade or more since I've thought about this. Until recently I hadn't identified the catalyst for this change. I think the difference is that I don't feel the need to be defined anymore. Maybe it was an adolescent dream to want my circumstances to define me. Maybe I was scared that if I defined myself, I would do it wrong. Maybe I thought that the person I was wasn't significant enough, and I really wanted to be redefined. It could have been any combination of these, but the point is that those feelings subsided and gave way to a little bit of maturity.

We can probably talk for a couple of days about what maturity really is. My answer for myself is this. Maturity is not waiting for others to make your decisions. It's choosing who you want to be day after day, and taking action toward being that person at every opportunity. It's setting your priorities today, and not changing them tomorrow when you don't feel exactly the same way.

In case you didn't notice, I said my life gave way to “a little bit” of maturity. Hopefully the people who know me would testify to my maturity as I've defined it, but most of them also know that I have plenty of room for improvement. The biggest part of maturity, as I see it, is picking up where your forward momentum left off, whether it was 5 minutes ago or 5 decades ago, and taking a couple of new steps in the right direction. Isn't that really all we can ask each other?

Always moving forward,

Tyler