Becoming Wise is supported by the Fetzer Institute.

I've had hundreds of big conversations, and my conversation partners share wisdom I carry with me wherever I go.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of our wisest models on the territory of reckoning with wrongs from the past that infuse and haunt the present.

In the 1990s, he helped galvanize South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy after decades of white supremacy as the law of the land.

He chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC.

Its basic premise was that any person was eligible for amnesty

if they would fully confess their crimes.

Archbishop Tutu knew that saying,

I'm sorry, is one of the hardest things for human beings to do,

and he did not expect the human redemption that would

surface on this stage.

This is becoming wise.

I'm Krista Tippett.

What did you learn about why, as you said, one of the hardest things for human beings to do is to say, I'm sorry?

I mean, what did you learn about forgiveness three-dimensionally that you didn't know before? Well, one was that I was amazed, first of all, at how powerful an instrument it is,

being able to tell your story.

You know, you could see in the number of people

who for so long had been sort of just anonymous,

faceless, nonentities,

just been given the opportunity, did something to rehabilitate them.

But more than this, it actually was a healing thing.

We had a young man, a black young man who had been blinded by police action in his

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