Requesting Forgiveness for Having Caused Harm

We are all familiar with the fight, flight, or freeze response to threats, and there are also the more feminine responses of tending or befriending. Connecting with others can rebalance the central nervous system, and taking care of others, shifting your attention from your own fears to tend to others can also help calm the hijacked amygdala. In the Jewish traditions related to Yom Kippur, which is a day of atonement, the Jewish people come together to request forgiveness of each other prior to making their annual appeal to God for forgiveness. This is a high-stakes endeavor, as the belief is that in order to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year, one must attain God’s forgiveness for the harm caused that year.

The trick is that you cannot request God’s forgiveness until you’ve sought forgiveness from the humans you’ve wronged, including yourself. In preparation for this day of atonement, there are ten days of reflection and repentance that begin on Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish new year.  A particularly inclusive concept in this quest for forgiveness, is to ask to be forgiven for the sins (harm) that you created unknowingly. This points to the concept that even if we are rigorously conscious of our actions with a supreme intention of not causing harm, we still must annually reflect upon and request forgiveness for the harm we committed unknowingly.

One ritual [Tashlich] involves metaphorically casting your sins into a body of moving water, by asking God’s forgiveness for specific sins and tossing bits of bread representing each sin into the flowing water to be carried away.  Imagine if world leaders could attain forgiveness for the harm that they have caused by casting bread into rivers. Of course, it would be best if our leaders did not cause harm at all, but the premise remains that by our very existence as humans we are causing harm.

Conclusion: Spectrums and Pebbles

We are indebted to Marilynne Robinson for bringing the issue of harmfulness to the fore through the ruminations of her protagonist, Jack Boughton. We have found that our own reflections on this matter have yielded insights for both of us. Our preparation of this essay has also enabled us to reflect in new ways on the Leadership Spectrum.  We believe there are several important takeaways from this essay.

Harm and the Spectrum

First, we would suggest that there is no way in the complexity, unpredictability, turbulence and contradictory nature of our contemporary world to live without creating some harm. It would be very hard to live as the Jains do, and the alternative of living in a state of inaction is itself a form of doing passive harm in a world that requires remedial action.