Of Forgiveness and Happiness

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” (Thomas S. Szasz)

Were someone to ask you if everyone deserves to be happy, I think your immediate answer would likely be “hells ya, bitch” unless you’re even more cynical than I. But I figure if we think about it for a minute, it becomes clear that everyone doesn’t deserve happiness. Or, at the very least, society doesn’t consider happiness to be an inalienable right. And I think the definitive case in point is life in prison. Jail ain’t suppose to be fun or make those who are there happy; that’s kinda the point. While I’m sure people in jail do experience happiness, part of the reason we put them there was to make them unhappy (and, sometimes, to protect others). But even jail and the legal system aside, I don’t think everyone deserves happiness; or at least not total happiness. It all depends on how you treat others. When you trespass against others (especially those you care about) you risk trespassing on your own happiness. Maybe this is purpose of guilt; a moral emotion for those who don’t deserve happiness.

So it turns out that everyone doesn’t deserve happiness. What about forgiveness? If you’ve wronged others, it seems as if being forgiven is essential to be able to get happiness out of your relationship with the person again. There’s heaps and heaps of new literature in philosophy on forgiveness; but, unfortunately, when I was exposed to it I was too busy daydreaming about rainbows and puppy dogs. (So if you wanna know what the learned people think about forgiveness, you’ll have to do the research yourself.) But my intuition is that everyone who has done something wrong doesn’t deserve to be forgiven; there are unforgivable sins. I’m not going to give examples of things people could do that might be too egregious to warrant forgiveness. While failing to give examples will make my job harder, I think we all consider different things unforgivable. I think it depends on the person and the situation. I hope that, for my purposes here, it’ll be sufficient to say that we all can think of wrongs that could be committed against us that, whatever they are, we wouldn’t be able to – or want to – forgive.

So when we refuse to forgive someone for something they did, what are we doing? Well, it seems to me that – if nothing else – we are defining the nature of the relationship between you and the wrongdoer as one where he/she cannot derive happiness from it; or one where you don’t want the wrongdoer to derive happiness (at least until forgiveness/amends has been made). To refuse (or be unable to) forgive is kinda like putting the wrongdoer in emotional jail when it comes to you. Sure the wrongdoer might still be able to derive happiness from you, but it will be overshadowed by the crime which hasn’t (and might not be) forgiven. More often than not, if not always, this means the nature of the relationship will altered. If you were friends, you might not be friends anymore. Or you might be not as close as before. If you were romantic partners, you might be no more than friends. Or nothing at all. I mean, refuse to forgive someone is to say something like “it’s not okay for you to get what you want from this relationship because of what you did to me; at least until you make amends and I forgive you”.

But when forgiveness isn’t a possibility, when faced with an unforgivable sin, can your relationship keep the status quo? (That is, how it was before you were wronged.) Hmm. Hard to say. If forgiveness is impossible, surely that fact will always loom in the background. Maybe at best you can get real close to how things were before; kind of like being on parole. But I’m unsure of even this. And it may be moot: even when forgiveness is granted, the relationship is fundamentally changed. To keep this jailhouse theme rolling, it might be akin to how people who served their time, reformed, and were released from jail are able to be normal upstanding citizens, but can never escape their perma-stamped ex-convict status (and its stigmas).

Don’t get me wrong; I’d love it everyone could be happy. But it just doesn’t seem like everyone deserves it. Which is unfortunate, but that’s the way life is. Someone might argue that, when forgiveness is genuinely sought (that is, when the wrongdoer does everything possible to correct or make up for the wrong), you’re obligated to give it. But I don’t know if that’s right – I’m not sure if forgiveness is something you’d ever be obligated to give someone. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.