In Part 1, we discussed the Internet’s affect on forgiveness. If you can’t empathize, you can’t accept an apology as genuine and thus never forgive.
In Part 2, we reviewed an opinion piece showing the inability of many individuals to apologize or accept an apology without a contractual agreement attached to it.
The question is, how do we get to forgiveness? Some would write a very long piece on this subject but in all honesty, it can be accomplished within a few sentences.
If everyone did these few things, apologies and forgiveness would be genuine and relationships would be healed.
1) Turn away from social media and work on your own life and personal friendships (find another way to stay informed besides social media).
2) When apologies come, and they will, forgive when you can and do not pull up the past in order to remind someone of what they did and punish them further. If you do this to someone, then you never forgave the person in the first place.
3) Learn to understand that you are not always right and when you do something wrong, give a genuine apology and do not repeat the wrong.
That’s it!
