Maria Montessori often spoke in analogies. One of my favorites encourages teachers to view the child as a fertile field in which we sow and tend seeds of interest, waiting to see what germinates, takes root, and flourishes.
We sow seeds of interest, but it occurs to me that we also sow seeds of grace. Never in my recollection has the need for this been greater. There is so much questionable role modeling for our children (to put it mildly) publicly paraded each day. There is such a societal rush to judge others and find them wanting in an effort to build up our own sense of righteousness and importance. Lessons in Grace and Courtesy, always a staple in the Montessori classroom, take on a new level of importance as influences from the outside world become louder and increasingly negative.
In November, I wrote a blog that addressed one of the top recurring challenges to social grace: put-downs. (Let Peace Begin with Me and Mine, 11/9/18) If you had not yet found the blog when it was published, you can still access it here. Today’s topic is another with an unfortunately wide reach: the need to authentically forgive others and let go of the past. Fortunately, its wide reach means that volumes have been written on the subject. Here are some bite-sized nuggets.C. S. Lewis said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.” This is especially true if we are still experiencing pain as a result of the words or actions of the other. The pain may push us towards a paradigm that does not serve us well: the belief that we should feel better before forgiving the other. This leads to a kind of conditional forgiveness:
– I will forgive you after you apologize – preferably publicly.
– I will forgive you after I see that you have suffered as much as you caused me to suffer.
– I will forgive you once you feel sufficiently guilty for your actions or words.
… Lucky for you – I can provide the means for you to suffer and feel guilty.
Do you see any of these attitudes in your classrooms during conflict resolution? If so, the children are confusing forgiveness with vengeance. This is not splitting hairs. The two are fundamentally different. Forgiveness heals; vengeance can only perpetuate the harm.
One of my favorite expressions about holding on to anger or resentment, variations of which have been attributed to everyone from Buddha to Carrie Fisher, says that being unable to forgive another is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It takes a tremendous amount of mental and emotional energy to support righteous indignation – energy that could be better spent in any of a thousand different ways. When we perpetuate or even nurture that negative mental and emotional energy, it becomes like a festering wound, making us sicker and sicker. We will never heal. We will not find peace.
Make no mistake: forgiving others can be hard, partially because we have some funny ideas about what forgiveness is. Let’s dispel some of those fraudulent ideas and come to a common understanding.
• Forgiveness does not mean that you are excusing the hurtful behavior or words. It means that you are dismissing the pain.
• It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt anymore. It does mean that you have chosen to move past the pain. When you are past the pain, it will hurt less.
• It means that you are deciding that you will not spend one more moment allowing what happened to affect you.
• It also means that you have acknowledged that you have no control over the other person. Withholding forgiveness does not protect you from future attacks by the offender– in fact, it is quite the reverse. If the person who hurt you feels your built-up rage and resentment, he is more likely to offend again. Darkness cannot banish darkness; only light can banish darkness.
• Forgiveness is an act of self-care. Forgiving has been shown to lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system, decrease stress hormones, and even alleviate pain.
• This is a biggie: all of this means that you don’t have to wait for the other person to take responsibility and express remorse.Her feelings about the event are beside the point. As long as you think you need to witness her feelings of regret, she holds you in her power. The most powerful response, perhaps ironically, is to forgive before an apology is offered, with no expectation of receiving one.
All of these are good, rational reasons to intentionally forgive. The problem is that pain takes us out of our proactive, rational brain and puts us into our reactive, emotional brain. How can we appeal to the part of our brain that holds the keys to inner peace and happiness?
Once again, as is often true in Montessori, we are best served if we can find our inner humility. We need to give up the need to feel superior.
• We can begin by acknowledging that part of the human condition is that we are all flawed and make mistakes. Perhaps we can recall a time when we unintentionally hurt someone. When we can see the plank in our own eye, it makes us more sympathetic to the fact that the other person has a speck in his.
• We might benefit from examining our paradigms about “those guys”. Last month, we examined our paradigms about children in the blog Sweating the Small Stuff (2/21/19), remembering that Montessori called us to the belief that children are inherently good, not inherently mischievous or naughty. If we believe that, can we stretch to the belief that adults are just bigger kids – also inherently good, wishing to treat and be treated fairly? It is well supported by research that those who are mistreated tend to mistreat others in the same manner. If someone hurt us, whether a child or an adult, it might very well be because something has hurt her – probably something that she couldn’t/didn’t forgive. Her unresolved hurt may be what prevented her from choosing a kinder alternative.
• If we can choose to build a paradigm of believing that people are, at the core, basically good, while it doesn’t alleviate the pain, it does allow us to take it less personally. We can think, “I know you wouldn’t have done that if you had other options – it must be hard to be you right now.”
• Alternatively, we might consciously surrender the right to judge others’ actions. I find having a mantra that I can repeat until the urge passes to be very helpful. My favorite is “Be kind: you don’t know what is going on in someone else’s life.”
• It is also wise to realize that forgiving someone for something that hurt us is often not a “one-and-done” situation. Sometimes it works out that way – we make up our mind to let the injury go and never look back. But often times we have to iterate – forgive the same event again and again until our subconscious brain really believes that it is safe to let it go.
Forgiveness is powerful. The moment that someone forgives the person who has harmed him, even if it doesn’t fully “stick”, healing can begin. When we free ourselves from the rage and resentment, what is left? Disappointment that someone would have treated us in such a way. Disappointment is much easier to live with than resentment. We no longer feel the temptation to seek retribution, which short-circuits the cycle of pain.
Forgiveness given before an apology is even more powerfully empowering. It keeps us from becoming a victim being held hostage by he-who-will-not-apologize. It sets us free.
How do we bring this skill to the children? The first step is a Grace and Courtesy lesson. It can begin with a couple of well-chosen volunteers acting out a situation where one hurts or offends another, followed by a discussion of what is needed for the offendee to forgive the offender. But if the idea is going to stick, it needs more reinforcement than a single lesson and discussion. It must be a regular feature in the classroom, whenever it is appropriate. We have to model it and encourage it in others.
• We use it when we are mediating conflict between children in our classroom – not by insisting that children apologize and shake hands, because a forced apology is the most certain way to cause feelings of resentment. Rather, we take on the role of empathizer, helping each child to experience the other’s feelings.
“I understand that you didn’t mean to hurt Dana’s feelings,Ian… Can you see how he might have found those words hurtful? … Dana, I can see how Ian’s words felt hurtful. He says that he didn’t mean it that way. Can you see how he thought he was being funny?”
“Accidents happen. Marina, Charlie says he didn’t intend to disturb your work. Can you see how his being so excited to go to snack made him race past you without looking at the floor? … Charlie, It sounds like Marina felt like it wasn’t an accident when you didn’t help clean up. Can you see why she might feel that way? What do you think would have happened if you had stopped to help?”
• We model forgiving people. In our classrooms, that often means forgiving people for making our jobs harder (whether children or adults). If children perceive that we are bearing resentment towards an administrator, assistant, parent, or child, our actions drown out our words, no matter how elegantly we discuss the subject. Sometimes forgiveness even plays out in the classroom, “Evan, I was really sad when you announced that the lesson was boring and left. I am sure you didn’t mean to hurt my feelings – you wouldn’t do that on purpose. Can you help me understand what it means when you say that something is boring? It might be that you think you already know what I am showing, or it could be that it feels too easy or too hard, or it could be that you really wanted to be doing something else. Do any of those sound like what you were feeling?” … “When you feel that again, here is a way to tell me that we can both feel good about…”
(P.S. Not only are we modeling forgiveness, but we are also building executive function.)
•We short-circuit judging behavior and language.There will be ample opportunity to do this when talking about current events or pop culture, especially now as we are (already) beginning a new presidential election cycle! We humans are storytellers. In some ways, it goes against our natural tendencies to tell “just the facts” without ascribing intent to someone’s words or actions. To whatever extent is possible, we want to encourage discussions of what has been said or done and how it impacts us and our future decisions without overtly judging the character and intent of the person/people who said it or did it. In truth, we don’t know what motivates others unless they tell us.
•We might even work forgiveness into our academic curriculum! For example, we might incorporate a few relevant mantras into a study of idioms or maxims, such as, “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones”; or “Judge not, lest you be judged”.
By discussing and modeling proactive forgiveness, we set the children up to be people who can find peace in the most difficult situations – a lifelong gift – and may heal ourselves in the process.
Reflection for all: An old adage advises us to “forgive and forget”. Easy to say, hard to do. Today’s reflection has three parts, offering three different perspectives on forgiveness.
• Think of a time when you hurt someone else – undoubtedly accidentally – and they forgave you. Did you expect to be forgiven or were you worried that you might not be? What did it take for the person to forgive you? How did forgiveness make you feel? Did it affect the way you wanted to treat the person in the future?
• Has there been a time when you hurt someone and they did not forgive you? Did you expect to be forgiven? Did you ask to be forgiven or try to make amends? How do you feel today about not having been forgiven – does it affect the way you treat the person today? Is there still hope for forgiveness or do you need to start your own healing by forgiving the person’s inability to forgive you?
• Is there something in your past – some past injury – that still makes you angry and resentful? What can you do today to take charge of your healing process – not by trying to make the other person feel or do something, but by finding a way to let go of the bad feelings within you? How can you begin that release and move towards forgiveness?
“The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim, therefore, is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inmost core.”
Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential