Forgiveness in the Age of Division: How Story Helps Us Shift Our Perspective

A reflection on how story fosters forgiveness, empathy and ultimately unity

My father, like many of us, was afraid of death. So much so, in fact, that he became afraid of life. He was a sick man with a weak heart and a fear of almost every aspect of living. After surviving several heart attacks and an aneurism in his brain, he still clung to life, even joining a second church in his final years. 'Double indemnity,' I used to joke. Needless to say, we didn't get on too well. In fact, fathers - cruel, absent or sick, have been a major theme in my writing to date. And forgiveness an unexpected side-effect.

There was a time when I hated my father.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison he said, ‘As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.’ My father died decades ago but my hatred didn’t die with him. For years I poisoned myself with anger and bitterness, hoping in some irrational way that it would hurt him. Of course the only person it hurt was me. I can see that now. And I regret it. For his sake and mine.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

It makes little difference whether we’re writing memoir, fiction, or a fictionalized autobiographical story, because we inevitably bring ourselves to our writing, imbuing it with the themes that run through our lives and working through those themes to a new understanding.

Writing a story can help us to create a space between our story and ourselves, and in that space we can sometimes see it without the burden of its attached emotions. This creates an opportunity to change our perspective on it or at least discover that there are multiple possible perspectives. Ultimately it can enable us to forgive, both ourselves and others.

Forgiveness comes when we understand that most of us are trapped in reaction to the stories that define us, and when we accept that most of us are doing the best we can in the circumstances we find ourselves in. Forgiveness comes with flexibility, with the capacity to see multiple perspectives. And it comes when we are able to step out of our stories and look at a broader story. Not the journey of an individual or a nation but the journey of humanity and of all living creatures.

I’m just completing a new book, a non-fiction one this time, about how story forms us and how it shows us the way to free ourselves. The story is about a changeling child called Rosebud. Myself, if you like. My inner child. My creative impulse. In the writing of it, in the exploration of the way story forms us, I had to delve into my childhood and relate aspects of it as honestly as I could. It was hard to go back there, really hard at times. Sometimes I became so sad I had to withdraw for days at a time, curling up in my bed and turning my face away from the world. Sometimes I felt such anger I had to leave my desk and storm up the hill to the nature reserve and the lookout where I can see the city below me, a more distant view that helps me to see the bigger picture. And there is always a bigger picture. Yes, the writing process brought grief and yes it brought anger but it also gifted me with joy and new understandings. And ultimately, forgiveness.

According to psychologist, Jean Houston, forgiveness can have 'a momentous and evolutionary potency' and its roots are located in the discovery of the Larger Story. We zoom our interpretive lens out to a wider angle where we are able to see both the forest and the trees. When we engage with the larger story, we see the patterns that stretch through time, forming cause and effect threads in our lives and in the lives of the people around us. We see how the threads of others form our own threads and how our threads then shape the threads of others, in what becomes a tightly woven, but not necessarily harmonious tapestry.

Emotional Truth

Understanding the motivations behind our actions or the actions of others (real or invented), can challenge the foundations on which we have lived our lives, encouraging us to question the stories that we’ve told ourselves about who we are. In Writing as a Way of Healing, Louise DeSalvo explains that ‘we are the accumulation of the stories we tell ourselves. So changing our stories. . . can change our personal history, can change us. Through writing we often revisit our past and review and revise it. What we thought happened, what we believed happened to us, shifts and changes as we discover deeper and more complex truths.'

Truth and fact are not always the same thing because emotional truth plays a large role in our perception of events. No two people experiencing the same situation or event will recall exactly the same details, interpret it exactly the same way or react with the same emotions.

If we insist on our version of a story, we are denying others their own reality. Even when someone’s belief appears patently false, it is still true for that person and they are living their lives in relation to this truth.

Shifting Perspectives

Exploring different perspectives can reveal unexpected facets of a character, and different interpretations of a story. When I run character workshops, one of the most profound and life changing exercises is one in which I ask participants to step into the shoes of another character, perhaps the villain if there is one, or an antagonist, but always someone to whom they or their main character is opposed in some way. Step into their shoes, I tell them, and ask why this person is behaving the way they are. What are the motivating factors that drive their actions? What is their truth?

This apparently simple exercise helps develop complex and credible characters and in turn complex and credible stories. It also shows us how important it is to dig into and understand the motivations behind our actions and the actions of others. But most importantly it engages empathy, reminding us that when we step into the shoes of others it’s possible to see beyond the divisions to what it is that connects us underneath our endlessly varied costumes.

The Journey

The character arc in story and the personal arcs we follow again and again in our lives, are there to point us towards unity; firstly unity inside ourselves and then with others. We can’t fix the world if we’re divided inside. If we’re filled with hate or fear then hate and fear is what we project. If we’re filled with compassion and love then compassion and love is what we project. The character arc is the journey we take to heal the divisions within ourselves by facing and shedding the negative patterns we are holding.

The inner transformation that we see in the character arc that’s woven through story and in the journeys we take in our lives, links back to Service. Reluctantly or not, we (or a character), undertake a journey, learn lessons, discover strengths, overcome weaknesses, experience turning points and epiphanies, and release old stories. Then we return forever changed and bearing new knowledge. Experiential knowledge. What do we do with this knowledge? We integrate it into ourselves. Then we live it. We share it. We do what we can. This is an often overlooked or undervalued aspect of story. But it’s a fundamental element because it values both community and the individual, and unity over division.

The Field

We all have unique stories and sometimes those stories clash with the stories of others – creating divisions between individuals, cultures and nations. Yet both in life and in story, when two or more elements don’t sit easily together on the surface, it’s possible to dig deeper, to look beneath their costumes and find the place where they can meet. The centre of the paradox. A place of peace. The very same place Rumi speaks of in one of my favourite poems.

‘Out there beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing,

There is a field. I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down on that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

Doesn’t make any sense.’

Story contains all the signposts we need to find our way to Rumi’s field, and it shows us how to stay there while we navigate this wild world, flowing intact through all the conflicts and struggles life can throw at us.

How can we find that Field? How can we concentrate on what unites us over what divides us? It’s difficult and not always possible as the world becomes increasingly polarized. But we can keep our focus on the larger story, on our common humanity. We can resist the political pigeon holing of the so called ‘Others’ into monstrous shapes in order to deny their humanity and therefore their rights. We can resist the politicizing and undermining of human rights. And we can hold the knowledge in the forefront or our hearts and minds that underneath all the costumes - the genders, skin colours, cultural and political differences - we are so similar. We all feel and dream and yearn and grieve. We all have times of joy and times of despair, we all want the best for our children and we all do the best we can from within our limited perspectives.

Like many things in life this is easier said than done. Every day now, I feel the anxiety swirling in my gut, the injustice eating away at my core. But sometimes, just sometimes I feel something else. An overwhelming love for humanity. A love that transcends divisions. And with that love comes peace. In the space of that peace, it is possible to turn my back on the fear, the anxiety, the anger, and instead ask myself - How can I be of Service in my own small way?

There was a time when I hated my father. I see now that despite everything, I loved him.

Rosie

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I’m Dr Rosie Dub, a novelist and non-fiction writer, as well as a creative writing teacher, mentor and developmental editor. My PhD research explored the purpose and function of story as an evolutionary tool for individuals and societies. I’m also the creator of the Alchemy of Story workshop series.

For me the writing process is priceless, so I do not use AI for either the writing or editing of my articles or books. If you would like to read more about AI and the challenges it brings for writers and readers, have a read of this article: Process or Product? What We Lose When We Let AI Write Our Stories for Us

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