It is Easier to Just Forget

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about forgiveness, what it entails, etc. This is a difficult concept, made so by the glossing over of the hard work that forgiveness demands by our society.

Forgive and Forget

Bury the Hatchet

Water Under the Bridge

You are Dead to Me

I guess that last one is not really so much about forgiveness. The rest speak to a forgetting, a letting go, and pretending that the incident never happened. Such an approach, is not a good one at all and can lead to what experts call, ScE-DaR[1] (spontaneous  cranial explosion due to anger repressed by one). Don’t look it up, it is so cutting edge that the cutting edge people have no idea it exists. You’ll get cut it is so cutting edge. The point is that when we try to “forget” we bury and repress and eventually our heads will explode… or something like that might happen.

Tan Twan Eng’s novel (that’s right, I actually read fiction) The Garden of Evening Mists, among many themes, considers the role of forgiveness. Now for those of you looking for a book review, move on! That is not what this is, it is a reflection. Go read someone gush about the writing, the poetry, or the fancy book cover, elsewhere.

Where was I?

Right, forgiveness (but I will not forgive the book review trolls).

The main character of Eng’s book, Yun Ling, is struggling with issues of forgiveness. She is a survivor of a Japanese war camp in Malaysia during World War II where she was maimed, beaten, and emotionally scarred. While she does not claim to be doing so, Yun Ling is struggling with her reluctance to forgive the Japanese. A large portion of the book is around her relationship with Aritomo, a Japanese gardener renowned for his skills. Yun Ling, the woman who is looking to convict war criminals, the woman who has a mountain of hatred and animosity towards Japan, reaches out to Aritomo because she feels a deep urge and desire to create a Japanese garden.

It is because she will not forgive herself.

She is only looking to punish those who hurt her, but is looking for a sense of reconciliation with her sister through her actions and engagement with Aritomo. Maybe she understands how important forgiveness is and how difficult it is to gain.

I do not want to get into the whys with great detail; I do not want to spoil the book. Yun Ling feels responsible, feels as if she has wronged her sister and so has to build a garden with someone who represents the very people she despises. One of the unforeseen consequences of this work is that is forces her to interact with the people she does not want to forgive. Yet she must if she ever wants to gain some kind of forgiveness. She has to learn to trust Japanese individuals and even find value in their culture. Through her interactions she sees the complexity of the people, the complexity of individuals in moments of war, and the complexity of blame. No longer can she blame an entire country for her wounds; she now has to wrestle with them herself.

Forgiveness is not about forgetting but about remembering. Forgiveness is not about letting things go, but about holding on and working to rebuild. Forgiveness is not about burying but exposing and staying in the hurt with the other. This is for the person seeking forgiveness and the person who is in the position to offer it. It is difficult, messy work. Garden of Evening Mists looks at the mess of forgiveness and does not shrink away from its complexity.

This is a strength of the book, but one that you will not get by skimming it. You need to journey with Yun Ling, you need to remember with her and continue to remember and learn and grow. It is a novel that is told in a way that brings you along to the place where you are left having to decide if you want to forgive, if you are ready to forgive.

In the end, for Yun Ling to forgive she must forget, but it is not an easy forgetting that she must do. It is one that is only achieved through great work, difficulty, and pain. This difficult, rebuilding is what forgiveness really is about.