Forgiveness is best revenge

I headed off one night of break to a party with a group of my friends (hello Mom, you avid… I headed off one night of break to a party with a group of my friends (hello Mom, you avid online Pitt News fan, I am anticipating my Christmas break scolding). While my old companions Pukey McPukerson and Makeout Makeouterson failed to rear their ugly heads, the event was graced with the presence of my familiar alter ego Passout Passouterson.

As I obliviously slumbered away on the nearest futon available after downing one too many, I became the unsuspecting victim of a pair of strangers who decided it would be hilarious to douse me in a booze waterfall.

They hadn’t realized that I had showed up with a group of the larger people at the party, including a football player at an Ivy League school and a Marine who had returned home from Iraq less than a month ago. They were furious when they discovered me and immediately demanded that whoever was responsible come forward.

The perpetrators cited the party doctrine that if someone falls asleep with shoes still on, they are fair game. My friends vehemently disagreed. The party effectively shut down as it turned into a huge dispute. The music abruptly cut off as a few attendants found themselves getting socked in the jaw, and a true rural Pennsylvanian brawl ensued.

I appreciated my friends’ concern in standing up for me, but found their reaction to be ridiculous and embarrassing. Forgive and forget, I thought. On the ride home, my friends made clear how much they disagreed with me – how the honorable thing to do when you are disrespected is to show no mercy.

I don’t suggest that my apathy toward the situation makes me a pacifist or even right. I can’t help but wonder, however, if our differences in opinion are as simple as things like the fact that they play college football and fight wars, while I am often immersed in environments – Semester at Sea, summer camp – that continually extol the virtues of non-violence and forgiving others.

Just recently, Pitt hosted Ghandi’s grandson who regaled students with stories of how his grandfather would never press charges when he was mugged as a young man, but forgive his assailants, often in hopes that they would become his followers.

Peace sounds like a logical conclusion within academic contexts and the safe havens in which I have been lucky enough to reside. Returning to a world where not everyone reads books or is interested in the dissolution of apartheid, however, can be a rude awakening. Real life does not come at us in boxes, but in shades of gray.

Consider a recent dispute over the design of the September 11, 2001, Memorial for Flight 93 in nearby Shanksville, Pa. The commemoration has been revamped in the wake of the likes of Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo from Colorado, who questioned the original “Crescent of Embrace” design. This design featured a crescent-shaped formation of maple trees.

Tancredo’s basis for opposing the plan was “because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam, and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists.” The revised memorial will instead feature a circular shape of 40 trees, symbolizing the 40 passengers and crewmembers killed.

Wouldn’t a memorial that embraced the true spirit behind Islam – the love and peace that stamps the lifestyles of most Muslims – and stressed the notion that we have not been left bitter by the actions of a few who hurt us be a more effective symbol of forgiveness and remembrance? It would certainly send a more positive message to our Muslim friends and neighbors than changing the design and intentionally skewing Islam as an element better left out of sight and mind.

What is the legacy that we wish to leave for future generations to judge our response to Sept. 11, 2001, by? Forgiveness or hate?

I am not a conventionally brave person, quick to throw punches and bust some heads, but I believe that true bravery isn’t always found in retaliation and keeping a laundry list of grievances. Whether you find yourself in a dispute on the porch of the Green Mansion or in the halls of the Senate, I hope that you remember the lessons history has taught us and try to bring them to the light of fruition in reality.

Believe Nelson Mandela’s theory that the most complete and lasting revenge is forgiveness.

Tell Daron that all is forgiven at djc14@pitt.edu.