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An essay on the power of forgiveness
A reflection essay about forgiveness
A reflection essay about forgiveness
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Finding Forgiveness Despite the Circumstances By: Elizabeth V. Norcross DeVry University This is a story where I chose to forgive someone despite how unforgivable the act was. Class: ENGL-062 Professor: S. Mcclure-Baker. First Draft Essay week #3 The Unforgivable Forgiven When someone hurts or wrongs us there is always one question we ask ourselves: should we forgive them, is it worth it? Then we usually assess how bad the action was and if it is forgivable to begin with. In Amy Tan’s The Most Hateful Words poem she talks about her encounters with her mother when she was young, “I waited for her to collapse, stricken by what I had just said. She was still standing upright, her chin tilted, her lips stretched in a crazy smile… We had many …show more content…
similar exchanges, Sometimes she actually tried to kill herself by running into the street, holding a knife to her throat,” (In Concert: Reading and Writing page 202). When she talks about this both she and her mother were threatening to kill themselves when the author was 16, and many years later they forgive each other, and only six months later, the mother dies, no longer having that weight on her chest, and the daughter’s weight is lifted as well. So, should we always forgive each other, no matter how devastating the wrongdoing was? I too have a story of when not only I, but the people around me, forgave something unforgivable. It was my sophomore year of high school, I had only been fifteen for a few months, and had recently broken up with my first boyfriend. I was a little sad, because the guy was actually a pretty decent guy; he just got too controlling in the end so I broke it off with him.
One day when I was in the backstage of the drama hall, this guy approached me and started talking to me, and he made me laugh and smile and be happy again. Eventually he asked me out because he supposedly thought I was cute. I said yes because I was young and hopeful and we went out on dates and got food and was a normal couple, or so I thought. A month in things started getting a little tenser in our relationship. He began to lie to me about things, and I, being the naïve 15 year old that I was, forgave him whenever he did any of these things. This is not the unforgivable act though. One day, on October 11th, 2013 he asked me to come over to his house, and told me his parents were home, but we were going out to eat later. He did and still does live a 5 minute walk from my house, almost exactly. I walked over and when I walked inside, I found out that he had lied to me again and that his parents were not home. I figured because he was eighteen years old he would know to behave himself and oh how naïve I was to think that. We went upstairs to play some X-box and he had lied about going out to eat, too because sitting on the table was Wendy’s, which was
the second thing that he had lied about, and I should have been more suspicious. So we played some of his games and all of a sudden he paused the game and asked me to have sex with him, which should have been my queue to leave, but I just said “I don’t want to” and I thought we would get back to playing X-box. I was so very wrong, because he turned me back to him and then pinned me to the couch, his hand on my mouth so I couldn’t scream or fight back or anything, and he took a piece of me that was not his to take. Living in a Christian household I was raised that the one person you have sex with should be your spouse, and considering what he had done with me I thought for some reason that bound me to him – that I was stuck with him forever, so I stayed with him. A month later my parents found out what happened, but they believed that I consented, and in their blind rage told me that the bible says I should be stoned to death and burn in hell for having sex before marriage, and believe me this tore me up in ways you cannot even imagine, being only a 15 year old girl who had my virginity ripped away from me, feeling absolutely worthless as it was. What made it worse was that he broke up with me saying he had “forgotten everything” only to return a month later begging forgiveness from all of us. I had been sent to my pastor for counseling because I had been threatening suicide. To be good Christians, me and my parents both forgave him and I dated him for 10 more months, and he kept lying to me, belittling me, and treating me like absolute garbage until he revealed to us that he was a Satanist, and that wasn’t going over too well with my parents, nor with me. My mom made me break up with him and lose all contact with him which was the worst, most confusing thing in my life at the time because I still believed I was stuck being his little wife forever. In a swirling downward fall of confusion I attempted suicide January 3rd 2015, and after months of doctors visits and counseling I am now on necessary anxiety medicine, and have fixed a lot of the problems me and my parents had, and as it turns out, losing all contact with the man who took everything from me gave me something even better because only a few months later I started dating the man I have now been dating for a year and 7 months, very happily. Before me and him even got together I told him what happened to me, and he has never held it against me and has actually been very supportive of me when I have my anxiety attacks. I forgave my rapist; my parents, my boyfriend, and my best friend have all forgiven me for nearly ending my life. All of us forgave something unforgivable, and I am certainly glad that they were able to forgive me. Does me forgiving the wrongdoing done to me make it right, make it justifiable; the answer is no. However, it does give me the peace of mind that what happened to me was in my past, and I can live a life without the event consuming it. The point of Amy Tan’s poem was that you should forgive everything, and I personally agree, because it makes all of the constant fear and pain of letting it boil up inside of you dissipate. Forgive everything, even if the wrongdoing is unforgivable. Citations: McWhorter, K. T. (2013). In concert: Reading and writing. Boston: Pearson.
The title of Lucille Clifton's poem, "forgiving my father", seems to be in sharp opposition with the poem itself. There seems to be no forgiveness, yet the title claims that it is there. The entire poem focuses on the debt of the author's father. "it is Friday." she says, "we have come to the paying of the bills." (1-2). But perhaps it doesn't necessarily mean that it is literally Friday, perhaps she just means it is the end, and maybe the debt isn't one of money, but of love. Clifton is using a monetary debt to symbolize a debt of love and affection. She uses this symbolism to show that by the end of the poem, she has forgiven her father, but it is not forgiveness as we would normally think of it.
“That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her saying, “Mother, forgive. Please forgive,” and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame.”
In Tim Seibles' poem, The Case, he reviews the problematic situations of how white people are naturally born with an unfair privilege. Throughout the poem, he goes into detail about how colored people become uncomfortable when they realize that their skin color is different. Not only does it affect them in an everyday aspect, but also in emotional ways as well. He starts off with stating how white people are beautiful and continues on with how people enjoy their presence. Then he transitions into how people of color actually feel when they encounter a white person. After, he ends with the accusation of the white people in today's world that are still racist and hateful towards people of color.
“Lost Brother” by Stanley Moss is a poem dedicated to a fallen brethren, an ancient tree that had lived a long, noble life. As bizarre as it may seem to mourn a felled tree, the speaker wants the reader to share in his sorrow through extended metaphor and personification to prove that the tree was full of humanity undeserving of its untimely fate and whose life should serve as an example to others.
Forgiveness is a process. You can still feel the pain, see the events behind your eyes, and feel the loss of the people around you but you have to find a way to forgive. People think that if you forgive someone you are forgetting or saying hey I would hang out with this person now because we’re cool but thats not at all what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is righting the wrong for yourself because you want the injustice you feel to leave. It’s acknowledging to that there a wrong that was done to you and you decide how you want to think about it not anyone
The essay "Forgiveness," written by June Callwood, explores the concept of forgiving and how it influences people's lives for the better. Her work describes many components of forgiveness, such as how difficult it can be to come to terms with, why it is such a crucial part of humanity, and how it affects all people. Her essay aims to prove that forgiveness is the key to living peacefully and explains specific examples of people who have encountered extremely difficult situations in their lives- all of whom found it within themselves to forgive. To clearly portray this message in her writing, Callwood uses several strategies. She includes fear inducing statistics, makes many references to famous events and leaders, and uses a serious convincing tone, all of which are very effective.
In the poem “Self-Pity’s Closet” by Michelle Boisseu, the speaker’s main conflict is self pity, and the author used diction and imagery to show the effects that the conflict has on the speaker. Phrases like “secret open wounds,” (3) show the effects with the word “secret” meaning pain that others are not noticing, which leads up to the speaker getting hurt, but no one indicating to notice it. Another effect is the speaker becoming more self concerning and thinking more about her negatives. This effect portrays through “night raining spears of stars,” (19) because night tends to be the time when people have the most thoughts about themselves and also the word “spears” make up an image of pain piercing through the speaker. “Tangy molasses of
—Forgiveness is a suite of prosocial motivational changes that happened after a person has incurred a transgression (McCullogh). McCullogh also asserts the forgiveness process includes empathy for the transgressor, generous attributions and appraisals regarding the transgression and transgressor, and rumination abalout the transgression where agreeableness takes a serious place in the person who needs to forgive someone. Andre was impressed by his father’s work, the emotion developed in Andre’s mind have given up revenge and resentment thought to his father. When Andre’s father had an accident that made his legs crushed and had to sit on a wheelchair for the rest of his life; Andre immediately felt how vulnerable people are. He cherished the relationship with his father, in fact after the accident Andre started to cherish everyone besides him. The accident was a trigger to a prosocial motivational change to Andre and his father’s relationship. “But deliver us from evil. Amen” (Dubus, 387). Andre prayed on his father’s funeral. Forgiveness needs something to trigger; Andre understand pop’s condition and forgave him. Andre knew that his father has done the best he could, and he was happy and grateful that he had a father. Moreover, Andre’s life was full of sports, the healing process was impacted by
The moment we learn to forgive and love is when we can begin to recover and move on.
Forgiveness is generally the ability to renounce one’s desire to punish others for their transgressions. However, there are occasions when one needs to absolve oneself of past transgression as well. In the novel BOO, Neil Smith illustrates how when Boo is in heaven, he begins to break down the barriers that separate him from socializing with others. He realizes the implications of isolating himself from the rest of the world. More importantly, he learns to establish a good relationship with other people, and to trust them in order to attain a meaningful life. Smith suggests that it is only through forgiveness of himself, that Boo is able to recover from the past bitterness and move on.
Holding onto grudges for a long period of time can sometimes make a person forget that there are some things you have to let go. Forgiveness is the understanding of situations and realizing that they may not be as serious as it was thought to be before. Just from the title of the poem, Forgiving My Father, it could be perceived as a poem that focuses on forgiveness, yet it’s main focus is on the negative qualities of Clifton 's father, who appears to have been a poor patriarch to both his wife and daughter through his own irresponsibility. The father was taking more than he was giving and was portrayed as an poor father and husband. The daughter explains that her mother gave her all and her father had nothing to offer. In Lucille Clifton’s , “Forgiving my Father,” Clifton’s endless stress from her deceased parents pushed her to forgive their wrongdoings and let go of the burden.
The Theme of Loss in Poetry Provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portrays a different character. the theme of loss in some way. Anthology Introduction The object of this collection is to provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portray the theme of ‘loss’ in some way. The ‘Loss’ has been a recurring theme in literature for centuries, from.
This forgiveness does not absolve anyone of blame, but creates a space for future self-realization by refocusing the attention from the past to the present and future (Mahaffey).
Witvliet, C. V., Ludwig, T. E., & Vander Lann, K. L. (2001). Granting forgiveness or harboring grudges: Implications for emotion, physiology, and health. Psychology Science, 12, 117-123.
Steven Standiford, chief of surgery at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, says that unforgiveness can make people sick. Emotional wounds are more harmful to our health than we realize. Built up anger will weaken your immune system causing you to feel sick more often. For this reason, we must make forgiveness a lifestyle rather than a one-time event. We must learn how to surrender the burden of anger and resentment over to God and allow Him to heal the wounds caused by others. When we forgive from our hearts, we will begin to experience the peace of God in our souls. Unforgiveness is an unnecessary weight that we carry around not realizing that it’s weighing us down and hindering our growth.