On Forgiveness

I received a phone call yesterday from a former client of mine from my financial advising days. I’ve known this person for at least ten years, I’m particularly close with a member of this person’s family, and we’ve been quite friendly with one another for as long as I can recall.

As it turns out, I committed an act of oversight when I left the industry. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that my own lack of diligence particularly stressed this person and caused some justifiable anger on their part. I’m listening to this individual on the phone yesterday, and it became quite clear to me: I’m wrong, they’re right, we have nothing to argue about, we both know the facts and the facts say that this person being upset with me is completely justified.

I felt completely inadequate apologizing, but I still did so profusely. I wrote a letter immediately reiterating how sorry I am, again hoping that somehow I wouldn’t lose this person’s friendship. This person doesn’t warrant special attention relative to other clients I had per se, but I wasn’t personal friends with all of my old clients either; losing that is a tough pill to swallow.

This whole ordeal has gotten me to think a bit more seriously about the nature of apology, forgiveness, and justice. I thought that might be blog-worthy.

First, it seems to me that my living with the knowledge that this person may hold a legit grudge may be perfect justice for my error. I’m thinking of the scene from Godfather III, when Michael confesses his life of crime and then sobs pathetically, only to hear the Archbishop reply, “It is just that you suffer.” Not that suffering is ideal, nor is my offendee’s potential grudge, but it may very well be what I deserve.

Second, my Catholic upbringing wants to scream that this person owes forgiveness, but thinking about it more I think that’s wrong. I am in debt to this person because of my error; they’re not in debt to me because I apologized. I would argue we all have a moral burden to care for our bodies as gifts from God, but does that mean we all have a moral burden to exercise regularly, necessarily? I’m not sure it does. I might be able to say definitively that this person’s mental/emotional/spiritual health would be bettered via forgiveness, but that doesn’t necessarily mean forgiveness ought to be expected. “To forgive is divine,” that is, in that it’s a free gift of the forgiver.

Third, being a forgiver by nature helps the process of seeing one’s own errors. This realization doesn’t exactly apply to this case, as the offendee hasn’t erred at all. Speaking broadly about offense and subsequent forgiveness, though, and I think that it’s clear that forgiving the errors of those who have offended us sheds some light on where we too have made mistakes. Perhaps that’s why forgiving others can be so difficult? It also may be the case that consciously forgiving another’s mistake forces an easier self-reflection on our own committing of the same mistakes in the future, thus further purifying virtuous conduct.