The Forgiveness Poll

I came across an item in my local newspaper the other day. It was an article detailing the results of a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll on the topic of forgiveness. The basic premise of the poll was this: among a list of “fallen” celebrities, who would you be most likely to forgive—Tiger Woods, Roman Polanski, Chris Brown, Bernie Madoff, Charlie Sheen, or North Carolina Senator John Edwards?

As I read the article and the results of the poll, collected from a random sampling of 1,216 adults nationwide who were interviewed by telephone, I felt a twinge of sadness that American culture has come to this: polling the public to see who should be forgiven and who should not.

Forgiveness, I’ve found, is a tricky thing. It’s a concept that is central to my recovery from alcoholism and addiction, yet it’s something that can be difficult for me to fully grasp.

Forgiveness, like trust, is a two-way street: in order to be trusted, I must be trustworthy, and while there are plenty of things I’ve done myself for which I might hope one day to be forgiven, I need also to forgive those harms done to me, both fancied and real. 

There’s an inflow and an outflow to forgiveness and, as it says in Step Eight, one of AA’s “amends” steps, “If we are now about to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn’t we start out by forgiving them, one and all?”

I know in my active alcoholism I harmed a lot of people, some more overtly than others and some so tangentially that the harm was hardly evident. Some of the harms were the result of commission—specific things I did that I shouldn’t have done—and some were the result of omission—specific things I didn’t do that I should have done. 

Regardless of the methodology by which I caused the harm, and regardless of whether the harm happened in my drinking years or now in my sobriety, I need the power of forgiveness, both the inflowing and outflowing types, to put that harm in the past and to restore purpose and perspective in my life. 

I was thinking about forgiveness last night, as I sat at a large gathering celebrating the start of an annual week-long business conference associated with a place I used to work. I had worked there for over 15 years, attending the conference in each of those years, and, while I hadn’t worked there for nearly a decade, I still received an invitation each year for the largely ceremonial conference opening dinner, and every so often actually attended.

The fifteen years I had spent in the employ of this organization were, in many respects, the most vital years of my life. During this time, my wife and I raised three children and I ultimately rose to the highest executive level in the department I was in. Plus, I managed to stay sober throughout and to keep going to recovery meetings on a regular basis.

Nevertheless, company politics began to creep into my work life and at twenty-plus years of sobriety I was ultimately forced to leave the position I had considered the pinnacle of my career. While I had done plenty of work over the years to move beyond what was, at the time, a crushing loss, in my mind I still had a hidden short list of “sinners” associated with this job, people I felt had harmed me in one way or another over the years. And, while I hadn’t really thought of them and the difficult times I went through for quite a while, lo and behold, some of them were there at the dinner, kicking up many of the old feelings of anger, frustration and fear.

Much like the time I spent with the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, I devoted a goodly portion of the main course to going over the list in my head—who, if any, should be forgiven?

By the time dessert came, I was so sick of running through the rolodex in my mind that I decided to simply put the whole question aside and to work, as the Eighth Step suggests, on willingness. “Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”

I had the list of people I had harmed in this circumstance. It was the same list as the list of people I thought had harmed me. All I needed to develop was the quality of willingness.

So, as dessert was cleared away and the last sips of coffee were being taken around the room, I walked through the crowd one last time before heading home, saying goodbye to old friends and hoping that the next time I attended such a dinner I could actually savor the moment, and the entire meal, without going through the litany of old hurts—healed, but still slightly tender to the touch.

And the poll? It provided some encouragement after all. Nearly 22 percent, it seems, were willing to forgive Tiger Woods; Charlie Sheen garnered a 13 percent chance at forgiveness, with the others getting either three or five, except for Bernie Madoff who came in at zero percent. Nevertheless, while 15 percent of those who responded were unwilling to consider forgiving any of the fallen celebrities, 32 percent said they would forgive them all.

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