Daily Herald opinion: Could you forgive your torturers? Learn from a former hostage

This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

Could you forgive people who torture you?

We don't mean the metaphorical "torture" like people who cut you off in traffic, talk on the phone right next to you on the train to work, or online commenters who keep smiting you. We're talking about actual torture, like what Taliban-affiliated captors did to Lombard native Mark Frerichs.

Frerichs, a civil engineer, spent nearly 32 months as a hostage in Afghanistan, captured after a car crash in January 2020. He was beaten, shackled and threatened with execution.

Yet he had a trick for persevering.

"The thing that kept me going was that I didn't take it personally," Frerichs said. "These kids are 20-somethings. They've been taught since birth that I represent the sworn enemy."

This after he was thrown in a trunk, where he lay for hours, his shoes removed and his feet approaching frostbite. In the first place he was dropped, his captors threatened to throw him down a 30-foot well, then sat him in the snow and kicked him in the head if he turned it. After a failed escape attempt, "that's when the fun began," Frerichs joked.

He was kept in chains for two years, and torture tactics ranged from firing blank ammunition at his head to beatings. "It just depended on the mood they were in," Frerichs said. He recalled his jaw being dislocated from a kick to it. "I was able to work it back in, but it was very painful."

And still, he didn't take it personally?

Frerichs already was a pretty open-minded guy. Seeking "more out there than Lombard," he joined the Navy, ultimately volunteering for the deep sea diving squad with its intense training. After his service and then a divorce, he sought a change of scenery - in Iraq, as a government contractor. Four years later, he contracted with the U.S. and Afghan governments coordinating construction projects. "The first three years I hated it," he said. But then he got good at it and formed his own company there, coming to respect the people and their culture.

All that alone required patience and understanding. Then he was kidnapped. He remained stuck in captivity through a 2020 prisoner exchange and the final U.S. troop withdrawal in 2021. Only after the efforts of his sister and several local and federal politicians did he come home last fall and start healing.

Could you do it? Could you forgive your captors? We live in a time where people - your neighbors, your leaders, your idols - may snap at each other over the littlest slights, where any criticism may be taken personally. People insult each other regularly online, if not also on the train or in traffic. Open-mindedness and forgiveness seem in short supply.

And here's this former hostage, who lived in a tiny cell for months and months, tortured randomly. They were just kids who didn't know better, he says.

We all could stand to adopt some of Mark Frerichs' perspective.