How do Elderly Individuals Build up their Forgiveness Perception?: Histories from Three Homeless Men from Colombia

Abstract

ProcedureThe history of the three elderly individuals who are part of this research is affected by traumatic and challenging events that built up their concepts about forgiveness and revenge. S1, shares the case of the murder of his father and 4 brothers due to political violence. With this in mind, S1 considers that his decision was taking revenge, confessing the murder of those who killed his family members. The S2, was taken into a boarding school when he was 7 years old. He did not have siblings and mentions that he has always been alone. He passed from the boarding school to a religious career until he became a priest. S3 was given to an aunt when the mother abandoned his father due to physical abuse.Since the first interaction with the elderly individuals, they revealed the existence of sadness feelings abandonment and complete loneliness that has negatively affected their physical, psychological and social wellbeing. It is assumed that these effects were caused by the challenges they faced throughout their lives. Moreover, they are constantly discriminated for being homeless. It was evidenced a contradiction between the idea of forgiveness and its application. It was also identified the absence of forgiveness references from their family contexts due to the lack of affective interactions and absent relationships with their parents that limit the acquisition of forgiveness as a tool to solve conflicts, reconciliation and the recovering of social bonds.Nevertheless, apart from the interpersonal relations in nonfamiliar contexts it is developed an idea of forgiveness, as a tool capable of providing them psychological recovering and emotional balance. For S2, forgiveness is built up from his religious training. In this way it is seen as a tool to live in harmony. However for S2 and S3 the application of forgiveness has an ambivalent scheme, because even though they expressed they have forgiven, they blame those experiences, as the consequence for becoming homeless. Moreover, there were found emotional gaps, negative feelings and the absence of closure. These consequences would have been solved through forgiveness and it would have provided emotional tranquility that is necessary to face their current situation in a different way. Forgiveness would have also helped to execute the process of closure which is necessary in these cases.According to the classification that resulted from other case studies, developed by other authors 8-10 it was found in the S1 that the concept is merely intra-individual. It means, a unilateral scheme because it understands forgiveness as a tool that is used for himself. It is not expected a reciprocal acceptance, neither aiming to create and interaction with the person who generated the damage. However it is necessary to mention that inside the confession it was revealed and episodic forgiveness. He said: 'If someone does something wrong, I won't forgive him… I never forget that' S1. MOJ Gerontol AbstractForgiveness is an aspect that has been widely explored in religion art and re...