It is often easier to ask for help than to ask for forgiveness. However, forgiving someone usually brings a sense of satisfaction and even pleasure and being forgiven even greater reward.
How does one go about asking forgiveness? First, expect to
be forgiven. Expectation is often the greatest factor in whether or not something
happens.
Second, ask simply. Say, for example, “I hope you will have
the grace to forgive me,” or even more simply, “I’m sorry.”
Not everyone is ready to forgive, and that is a risk one
takes in asking. However, few can resist a direct request. And when they do
forgive, they feel good about themselves, and so do you. When this happens,
don’t forget to say “thank you.”
My sister, Danielle, says that admitting one’s own humanity
(i.e. the frailties that go with being human and the mistakes that one makes
because of being human) can go a long way toward defusing hostile situations.
Her approach is to say, “Well, that was less than perfect. Some days I just
seem determined to prove how human I can be. I guess I get to cancel the angel
wings and halo for another week.”
She says that generally people laugh or give her a hug. Even
the sternest will relent and say something like “Well, as long as the problem
gets fixed…”
Laughing at oneself in the act of asking forgiveness,
Danielle, a psychiatric nurse, claims, allows the other person to step away
from his or her perfectionism or excessively high standards for a moment and to
relax and enjoy being human.
Here is another important part of forgiveness. Give credit
to the other person for being “big” enough to forgive.
As a young soldier stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in
San Angelo, Texas, I found my check missing one pay day, and, it turned out, it
would be missing for some time to come because of problems with the financial
paperwork associated with my belonging to the Army while stationed at an Air
Force base.
Military regulations allowed only partial cash payment in
such cases, which put me in a financial bind and would be a hardship for some
time to come. I was certain that the error was the fault of the finance
sergeant in charge of processing pay information. SSG West (not his real name)
and I exchanged some acrimonious words, but that, of course, did nothing to
improve my financial situation. A few days later, I learned that the fault was
not his and that everything that he had told me was accurate. I returned to his
office, told him what I had learned, and apologized for my earlier words. He
quickly forgave me and redoubled his efforts to help me. A few months later –
and much sooner than anyone had expected – my finances were back on track.
Soon after that, SSG West and I ended up working together,
as I was assigned to casual status in the combined personnel and finance office
while action was being taken on my application for a direct commission to
officer ranks. SSG West became my strongest advocate, and he was as pleased for
me when the commission was awarded as he would have been for himself.
There is a tradition in the Army that the first person to
salute a newly commissioned officer gets a silver dollar from the officer.
After the commissioning ceremony, SSG West jumped up to salute me, but the
First Sergeant (Top) of my unit beat him to it. As I handed the silver dollar
to Top, I saw disappointment on the face of SSG West. Later that day, I stopped
by the finance office and handed a silver dollar to my advocate. You would have
thought I had given him a million silver coins, not just one.
My apology in this case led to much more than forgiveness.
It led to a special relationship between an unlikely pair of friends: a black
guy from the deep South and a white girl from New England, and, later, between
a non-commissioned officer and a commissioned officer – a friendship that began
with an apology and solidified by a silver coin.
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Excerpted and adapted from a collection of vignettes I published, copyright 2003.
