Forgiveness
leads the way
toward healing

As I'm deciding whether I want a bagel or cookie from a cafe's glass case, a few words from the conversation in front of me drifts by.

Frederic Luskin: Teaches strategies for healing through forgiveness Forgive For Good Workshop: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow; registration from 8:30 a.m. Place: Pacific Institute of Chemical Dependency, Queen's Medical Center Cost: $85 Call: Brad McDaniel, 230-4644, or contact Merton Chinen, 587-5712, for information on a half-day program Thursday for professional youth-service providers

"It this isn't warm, I'm going to get back in line. It's not going to be the last of me," the man in front of me says angrily to the employee.

It looks like a typical conversation as the customer is leaning in and not raising his voice, but I can hear the man's tight, controlled tone.

As Dirty Harry walks away clutching his coffee, I laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation. I look sympathetically at the employee, but there's no reaction on the teenager's face. No shrug of the shoulders, no ironic smile. He is either the consummate professional or he's witnessed tantrums before.

Some situations might warrant such a reaction, but why would a mild irritation over cold java turn into a full-blown vent? I wonder if the customer will feel foolish later or if this was just another in a string of tantrums.

Stanford professor Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., says indignant behavior results from a sense of entitlement and is an example of our society's emphasis on grievances rather than forgiveness.

"You see it in families," said Luskin. "You see it in friends. Why do people get (angry)?

"In our culture, people have an easier time focusing on interpersonal failures rather than generosity or humility. The worse-case scenario is when people marry in (happiness) and then five years later there is so much anger."

Luskin, the author of "Forgive for Good" and co-author of "Stress Free for Good," has been hosting workshops nationwide since 1996 on the healing effect of forgiveness. He has a different definition for the word than Webster's Dictionary, which defines forgiveness as "giving up resentment against."

"It's about making peace with the word 'no,'" said Luskin, whose workshops are a mixture of lectures and exercises. "'No' mean it's OK that our expectations of people are not met."

He offers a far more dramatic scenario of unresolved anger involving a mother whose son was murdered during the conflicts in Northern Ireland. She experienced depression and alienation for 20 years before participating in the first Stanford-Northern Ireland HOPE Project, co-directed by Luskin. On average the participants' levels of stress were halved from the start of the project to assessments made six month later.

Ideally, forgiveness will lead to compassion and humility, said Luskin. But many people, perhaps on a less dramatic scale, have an unresolved situation or relationship, usually involving parents or their ex-spouses. "It's as if there's a bad ex-spouse factory," he said.

Luskin said people often have a misconception of forgiveness, believing that it means the grievance that happened to them was OK, which isn't true.

"It's more about making peace in one's mind with a situation or a person. It's about reducing the stress," Luskin said.

The stress can result in anger, even depression, if one relives a hurtful situation over and over. "It's what makes people hurt people 20 years later," said Luskin. "There is a biological disposition to be alert around danger. And then there's an alertness to what's happening -- so it won't happen again."

Some people are more forgiving by nature. Others need a nudge to lessen their anger before it threatens well-being or harms one's health, such as raising blood pressure. Anger, hurt and stress can lead to illnesses such as depression or a loss of self-esteem, said Luskin.

At the very least, grudges are stumbling blocks to peaceful relationships. "It becomes part of their life story, the betrayal," Luskin said. "I hear that people have a terrible life. There's no argument. But is (dwelling on grievances) making them better? The simple, bottom line is that forgiveness is good for physical and emotional health. It is teachable."

Among his strategies: