Believing that we are worthy of unconditional love seems to be a prerequisite for self-forgiveness. In my clinical experience, the barrier to Self-forgiveness appears to be the question of whether we ourselves are deserving of unconditional love. Self-forgiveness can appear to be an insurmountable task for many. Forgiveness, specifically self-forgiveness is paramount in the relieving the despair, shame, anger, depression, angst of existential guilt for our patients. The confrontation with existential guilt that our patients face as they approach death is a significant clinical concern. We’ve all yearned for forgiveness some more than others. Time running out, regrets, mistakes, damage done to relationships, to careers, to lives where trust has been shattered. The stories of lives lived, paths untaken, choices not made, potential untapped, responsibilities that cannot be fulfilled because of suddenly shortened anticipated life trajectories. A challenge that is often unavoidable in a busy clinical practice, seeing many patients day in and day out. Not surprisingly, the challenges of how live fully while we are alive-to be able to accept the life that one has lived, and to face death with a sense of peace and equanimity-is a challenge we share with our patients. It is the unconditional nature of forgiveness that characterizes existential forgiveness and the focus on forgiving the “who” that is central to forgiveness as a path toward the relief of existential guilt in the face of the finiteness of life, in the face of death.įor those of us engaged in the clinical care of patients with life-threatening illness, confronting the proximity and inevitability of death, the awareness that both we and our patients live in the same existential boat with the same existential concerns becomes unavoidable. Something or Someone? Does one forgive something, or rather does one forgive someone? If I say I forgive you on the condition that, asking forgiveness, you would thus have changed and would no longer be the same, do I forgive? What do I forgive? And Whom? What and Whom (Qui ou Quoi- Derrida’s mantra on Being). In addition, there is an unconditional element to existential forgiveness. … Forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable. …if one is only prepared to forgive what appears forgivable, then the very idea of forgiveness would disappear. Is this not, in truth, the only thing to forgive?. In order to approach the very concept of forgiveness, logic and common sense agree for once with the paradox: it is necessary it seems, to begin from the fact that there is the unforgivable. But in the existential sense, Derrida (2001) emphasizes that Forgiveness in these arenas is often predicated on conditions, change, and actions. There are a number of conceptualizations, definitions, and synonyms for the term “forgiveness.” In political, spiritual, and transactional senses, forgiveness often involves concepts of admission of wrongdoing and guilt, apology, repentance, punishment, reparation, reconciliation, pardon (a gift), amnesty (to forget), grace, redemption, and accord. End-of-life task completion ( Steinhauser, et al., 2009), in the forms of addressing unfinished business, and attempt to repair relationships, express love, and say goodbye are possible for some of us in the dying process, but ultimately it is our ability to forgive ourselves for merely being imperfect humans, subject to thousands of internal and external and transactional events beyond our full control, that allows us to deal with the despair of existential guilt.ĭEFINING FORGIVENESS IN THE EXISTENTIAL SENSE It is an editorial/essay for this journal because forgiveness is what we are all called upon to grant ourselves when we face our mortality and confront the existential guilt that causes the despair we feel when we face our deaths and have no other recourse to remedy the uncompleted responsibilities, the lost possibilities, the potential never reached, the regrets, the pain, and the shame we caused others and ourselves while living a mortal, imperfect human life.įrankl (1969) wrote that the task of dying is to relieve existential guilt, and forgiveness forgiving ourselves is the last refuge or recourse we have to achieve this imperative. It concerns the concept, act, and process of “forgiveness.” It concerns the imperative of forgiveness in human existence, an imperative in human existence made essential because it is at the root of our essence and existential being as humans living mortal, fallible, imperfect lives. It’s for our patients and colleagues and for the several billion human beings we will never know or encounter. It’s for our parents and our children, our spouses, partners, friends, families, and neighbors. This editorial is written for you, for me, for all of us.
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