Exploring Individual’s Lived Experience of Forgiveness in Ethiopia and Its Implication for Community Peacebuilding
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa Unversity
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of forgiveness of eight individuals
by using Moustakas’s (1994) transcendental phenomenological design which provides
systematic steps that lead to an essential description of the experience. Techniques such as
media and social network were used to identify participants who experienced forgiveness and
purposive sampling along with criterion and snowballing strategies were employed for
recruitment. This study aimed at exploring and understanding the essences of the experience of
forgiveness through the accounts of participants (Moustakas, 1994). A semi-structured interview
was conducted with one female and seven male offended individuals who experienced
forgiveness. From the individuals accounts eight themes: Representation of the harm/hurt, paths
to decide and grant forgiveness, refraining from thoughts and activities against granting
forgiveness, forgiveness entailing reconciliation, love and established positive relationship,
forgiveness as letting go off negative feelings and/or developing positive ones, individual
capability differences in forgiveness, circumstances facilitating victims’ capability to forgive and
forgiveness is beneficial developed. By reflecting on the textural descriptions the structural
descriptions of the experience of the phenomenon were constructed. The textural descriptions
and structural descriptions integrated into a composite textural structural description of the
experience of the phenomenon. Finally, this study resulted in five essences. And my study
revealed that forgiving others is the offended individual’s letting go of resentments with/ without
directly communicating the transgressor(s) and this letting go of has ended the potential revenge
and its destructive, cyclical effects. And this result has an implication to build peace in the
community.