Most apologies I experienced as a kid were far from heartfelt, mostly forced, and solely triggered reactions after mess ups. I’m writing this about 3 minutes after I gave an apology of my own. Nowadays, my apologies are highly calculated, deeply thoughtful, and typically after a day of long, painful consideration.
I think we train children to say, “I’m sorry!” too flippantly. It’s the immediate response to you hurting someone, but you never take the time to realize what you did or how you affected the other person. We don’t even realize that those two words “I’m sorry” do not actually fix the problem.
After one of those days of lengthy consideration, I took a moment to swallow my pride and tell a friend why I shouldn’t have responded the way I did. To me, the “I’m sorry” mentality misses the point. This thinking looks too much at the pain or the outcome that was inflicted rather than how the pain or outcome was caused. What I’m trying to say is that our actions lead to outcomes, but too often we simply apologize for the outcome, not the actions. Apologizing doesn’t fix anything. In the end, fixing you is what fixes things.
This may all be elementary to you, but it’s something I’m continuing to learn. It feels terrible leading up to an apology, but after you do, you feel renewed… or maybe it’s forgiven.
