What it Means to Forgive
One of the main ideas that Beyonce covers in her visual album Lemonade is forgiveness and what it means to forgive. Within the album, the song “Sand Castles” plays after the word “Forgiveness” is placed on the screen for a couple of seconds. As those words are displayed, Beyonce recites a poem written by Warsan Shire saying,
At this point in the album, popular opinion believes that Beyonce is speaking about her relationship with her husband Jay-Z. However, Beyonce is speaking towards more than that. It is beyond her life and her personal relationships. Kinitra D. Brooks and Kameelah L. Martin break down the meaning behind this passage in their book “The Lemonade Reader: Beyoncé, Black Feminism and Spirituality.” Within this conversation, Brooks and Martin state that the forgiveness section in the album explores “female unity as a spiritual and essential relationship because it addresses healing and how healing is a rebirth.” It is necessary to forgive because without forgiveness there is no healing. So, there is a reason to forgive.
However, instead of thinking about whether or not someone, such as Beyonce, should or should not forgive, but how. Dr. Frederic Luskin, Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project explains that one of the most frequent misunderstandings about forgiveness is that forgiveness is not for ourselves but for someone else. One of the key ideas found in Dr. Luskin’s work is that “The objective of forgiveness is not to forget or deny hurt nor is it necessarily about reconciling with the one who’s done wrong. It’s about taking power over how we will respond.” The psychology of forgiveness proves that the way we chose how to respond to conflict or wrongdoing will have the most effect on ourselves and dictate the way that we feel and how we grow.
Beyonce’s album is a journey through the emotions of hurt. It begins with a stream of denial and anger and transitions into forgiveness and reconciliation. Just over a year after Lemonade was released, Jay-Z released an album titled 4:44. It is speculated that this album is an apology and admission of Jay-Z’s affair with another woman. Within his songs, there are lyrics that speak to his want for reconciliation with his wife, his daughter, and his unborn twins. In the song “4:44” one of the phrases said is “Look, I apologize, often womanize / Took for my child to be born See through a woman’s eyes / Took for these natural twins to believe in miracles / Took me too long for this song I don’t deserve you.” In this, Jay-Z is admitting to his wrongdoing and making it clear to Beyonce that he understands what he did and how sorry he is. He even goes as far as to say that he doesn’t deserve to be with his wife anymore because of the act he has done. Jay-Z is offering his reconciliation as the overall message in this album. Just like Beyonce is offering her forgiveness, this relationship will be reborn and be healed.
