Too little
The available humiliation
“Before answering, let us remember their famous poster.”
A personal wound replaces examination of the current claim.
Forbearance
Decline an opportunity to humiliate an opponent when a legitimate disagreement can remain civil.
Willingness to restrain a harsh retaliatory response under provocation.
Forbearance restrains a harsh retaliatory response under provocation. Public disagreement can supply endless opportunities to make an opponent look foolish. The disposition chooses a response suited to the issue instead of using every available weapon. Firm correction, a clear limit or protective action can still be warranted.
Forbearance gives a disagreement that stays about the decision
An opponent challenges your cost estimate in a meeting. You remember their spectacularly misspelled poster from last month and have a photograph ready on your phone. It would get a laugh. You leave the phone face down and answer the calculation. The old poster is spared another public appearance; the present estimate receives the scrutiny it needs.
Finding the balance in Forbearance
A legitimate challenge tempts a speaker to retaliate with an irrelevant embarrassment.
A fitting response
An answer to the issue
“Here is the basis of the estimate; which assumption do you dispute?”
The disagreement stays open to reasons.
Pursued too far
Silencing every objection
“I must never correct them or set a limit, however they behave.”
Restraint is mistaken for surrendering the ability to respond.
If the conduct becomes abusive or prevents the meeting from functioning, a firm boundary may be the fitting response. Forbearance concerns needless retaliation, not permission for unlimited mistreatment.
What Forbearance makes possible
People can challenge a decision without every exchange becoming a contest in humiliation. That makes useful disagreement more likely to survive. Restraint also preserves attention: the committee can test the estimate instead of spending the next hour judging a photograph.
Forbearance in ordinary life
A sharp message
Remove the sentence whose only purpose is to wound before sending an otherwise necessary correction.
An old mistake
Ask whether a remembered embarrassment is relevant evidence or simply a convenient weapon.
Nearby virtues, different work
Composure
Composure collects oneself for deliberate action; Forbearance restrains the retaliatory response one might deliberately choose.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness concerns ongoing resentment. Forbearance can govern the present response even before resentment has eased.
Forbearance and its counterfeits
The postponed revenge
A polite surface can counterfeit Forbearance while a person quietly prepares unrelated punishment. Genuine restraint lets the response remain proportionate to the issue.
The helpless silence
Calling an inability to object Forbearance counterfeits the virtue when it treats self-protection as a fault. A clear boundary can preserve a legitimate disagreement.
How to cultivate Forbearance
Identify the part of your reply that answers the issue.
Notice what merely promises the pleasure of retaliation.
Choose a proportionate response, including a boundary when needed.
Try it today
In a low-stakes disagreement, remove one irrelevant personal jab while keeping the point you need to make.
Questions worth returning to
- What would this sentence contribute besides a wound?
- Would a firm limit serve the situation better than either retaliation or silence?
Keep the practice proportionate
Forbearance does not require enduring abuse, staying in a threatening exchange or giving up protective action. Use a low-stakes situation for the suggested practice.
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
And throughout our participation in the group process we must be ever on our guard that we do not confuse differences and antagonisms, that diversity does not arouse hostility.
The warning is about turning a difference into a personal opposition before examining it. Answering the disputed cost rather than displaying an old embarrassing poster keeps that distinction alive.
These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated.
Edmund Burke · Speech on Conciliation with America · House of Commons, 22 March 1775
Burke states a serious disagreement while preserving respect on other questions. Forbearance permits a firm answer to the objection without turning every past fault of the objector into evidence against it.
Notwithstanding the continual wrangle between the governor and the House, in which I, as a member, had so large a share, there still subsisted a civil intercourse between that gentleman and myself, and we never had any personal difference.
Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · Part III
Franklin recalls maintaining working relations across sustained political conflict. His account keeps disagreement directed at public business while acknowledging the people on its opposing sides.
A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
George Washington · Farewell Address · 17 September 1796, spirit of party
The fire is party spirit. Washington has just acknowledged its possible checking function before warning about its excess; the image helps distinguish substantive opposition from feeding hostility for its own sake.
The peculiar character of all the best kinds of dissent from the nominal creed of the time, makes it rather less difficult for us to try to reconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for the feelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would have been the case a hundred years ago.
John Morley · On Compromise · Chapter IV
Morley’s discussion of religious dissent aims to keep serious disagreement compatible with regard for others. The meeting can address the objection fully without adding a gratuitous personal wound.
For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.
Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · Part I
Franklin connects the manner of disagreement with whether another person can attend to its substance. The cost question deserves a clear answer whose force comes from the evidence rather than the pleasure of putting someone down.
Specious words confound virtue. Want of forbearance in small matters confounds great plans.
Confucius · The Analects · Book XV, chapter XXVI · Translated by James Legge
The saying places a small indulgence in irritation beside the larger work it can spoil. Leaving the embarrassing poster unused keeps attention on the present cost dispute.
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Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.