Small Arcs of Larger Circles by Nora Bateson

Author:Nora Bateson [Bateson, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909470965
Publisher: PublishDrive
Published: 2016-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

I can think in bold letters “I FORGIVE that person.”

I can write a card with those words in it.

I cannot actually give away forgiveness; it is not in my possession.

The most I can give is time.

The fact of “knowing not what they do” does nothing for the pain. Surely we never know what we are doing, or how others will interpret our deeds. You do not say to a child who touches a hot stove, “forgive the stove, it didn’t mean to burn you.” Or to someone who picks up a poisonous viper, “forgive the little snake, it did not mean to bite you.” We don’t say those things because obviously forgiveness is irrelevant to the child with the burned fingers. The child is merely expected to learn from the experience. There is no need to be angry at the stove, no need to hold a grudge, the need is to learn where and when to touch it.

Learning is the key. Once the child learns how to interact with the stove without getting hurt, the child is free—until a new learning arises. Caution may manifest as a process of learning to learn. With learning comes the capacity to learn again. To be alive is to accept the possibility of pain, and to know that one day another form of pain will manifest.

What happens when we zoom out and examine transgressions that are not personal, but are political, national, or religious? What sort of reaction and interaction can expand our capacity to respond in ways that create less trauma over time? The larger ecologies within which the transgressions of humiliation, exploitation, and vengeance are found require a response with far more capacity for complexity than surface-level forgiveness. Global volatility is not decreasing as the boundaries of economy, ecology, and socio-political governance blur. Multinational corporate business, climate change, and war/terror are manifesting large-scale people movement, poverty, and trauma. The approach to these painful situations is of paramount importance. We will all live in the stories as they play out in decades to come, just as we are now living in the aftermath and with the consequences of decisions made in the early and mid-20th century.

One approach:

1. Define a polarity.

2. Add trauma and drama.

3. Panic in search of a solution while the situation blooms into cascading and overlapping destruction.

4. Define a solution within another polarity

5. Repeat steps 2-5 indefinitely.

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