Of course, the ’moral bookkeeper’ (moralische Buchhalter) residing inside all of us will always weigh the evil against the good!
Not long ago, Klaus Grün brought him out of anonymity to the light of day in the IF Blog! And I am sure all of you will agree that he exists.
Because we all have been suffering under him since earliest childhood: we can never forget a slight, an injury or a humiliation (see picture) we suffered, all of which he will without fail enter in our memories as ’debits ’.
With this kind of bookkeeping, we look for the balance on the ’credit’ side: consciously or subconsciously, we will take pains to enter all the nice things we experienced: acceptance by others, spontaneous friendliness we were offered and also the joy we find in helping others, etc. …
However, on the ’credit’ side, we will also take note of the ’very secret joy’ we find when we have been able to successfully revenge some evil or other we were subjected to. If, on top of this, we see the objects of our revenge suffer, this will add to our satisfaction …
The latest moment for our personal dilemma to start is when we plan our revenge, but basically, it starts earlier than this: all of a sudden, we will mentally be concerned in a destructive way with the one person who gave us emotional or physical pain (see picture). The person we hate and abhor!
Thinking of revenge torments us day and night. These ideas escalate, leaving no room for persons whom we love and who deserve our affection!
In other words: the very subject that hurt us gets additional power over us through our ’desire for revenge’, thus determining our behaviour in a way we never intended.
But that is exactly what we avoid if we forgive!
Because that is when we not only get rid of the hurtful humiliation, but also of the person who gave us the pain.
Mind you, I am not saying this is easy!
But as soon as we understand this mechanism, we can practice and will get better and better at quickly finding back to inner peace and serenity after every humiliation.
As a side effect, we get closer and closer to the goal of becoming an ’autonomous person’ who can determine by himself what he wants to do as often as possible!
We should, however, never forget that this autonomy will always remain rather limited and that, basically, it is borrowed in all individual instances. Because the ’animal’ inside us is powerful and hard to tame.…
KH
(Translated by EG)
PS:
The picture was taken by Waldtraud Schmalenberg. It shows the author as ‘Konrad Flesser’ in the scenic performance of ‘Das Schandmahl’
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