i'm sorry....

I was having a catch-up chat with one of my pals the other day in the street, when a woman pushing a buggy rammed into her ankles.

The woman was hurrying and she was obviously stressed because her small child was crying like a car alarm in high wind. But it was my friend who apologised first. The woman with the buggy barely recognised her fault, and pushed off muttering inconvenienced insults under her breath while looking for something to shove in her child’s mouth.

I questioned my friend – why did she say sorry for being run over? It’s like apologising for being shot because you got in the way of someone with a loaded gun. It is true that there is no quicker way to diffuse a situation than saying sorry, but are we all so pre-occupied with maintaining the status quo that we let others, literally, walk all over us?

Her answer: “I don’t know. I do that a lot.”

Don’t we all? It seems that sorry is only the hardest word when you have an invested interest, a paradigm of the human condition is that no one likes to admit they are in the wrong, yet we all apparently have something to feel sorry about (usually ourselves).

It really interested me to find out that the word sorry (in the context we use it) is attested from 1834; which means we have only been expressing our regret to each other (formerly) for 177 years.

But regret itself is as old as the hills. The emotions of sadness, shame, embarrassment, depression, annoyance or guilt we feel after committing an action we wish we hadn’t have been illustrated in Greek tragedy, Biblical allegory and Shakespearean drama.

It seems now we can express our shame nothing can stop us, so much so that sorry is now being used as a word to prevent resentment, rather than as a word to excuse oneself from it.

The irony of the whole “sorry” situation was that my friend and I were discussing difficulties she was having with her partner. They had argued bitterly the previous evening, and she refused to admit she was in the wrong. 

She was entirely prepared to return home and sit in silence for hours with a man she loves, rather than saying sorry. But it was an entirely different story with this rude stranger, who she would be lucky not to bump into again.

“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.” (anon)

Pride is a peculiar thing… it may very well come before a fall, but very few could be in the race without it. Aristotle viewed pride as the “crown of the virtues; for it makes them more powerful, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.”

It is important for esteem to have a high sense of your personal status, and pride can be an extremely positive emotion, but when it prevents humility you can see why it is ascribed as a deadly sin.

Dr. Terry D. Cooper (2003) conceptualizes excessive pride, along with low self-esteem, as an important paradigm in describing the human condition. He said “if pride emerges, it is always a false front designed to protect an undervalued self.”

There is always as much a chance of you being in the wrong as the next person. Nobody is perfect, yet everyone seeks perfection in another and then blames the other for the disappointment in not finding it. This is deeply unfair. The axis of love and hate rests on compromise.

You could, equally, be right and justified to hold your position.  Your partner could have done a terrible thing, forgotten something extremely important or trespassed in some other way against you. Is holding a grudge doing you any service? Is being right the same as being happy?

Forgiveness is a selfish act, which is why everyone should do it. I have had this debate with many friends, and in my opinion, the only reason people forgive and suggest you do the same is because it makes you feel better about yourself.  It has little to do with making another feel better; when you forgive you are considered the better person. And if you can truly forgive your worst enemy, then you are at peace.

Until you can, you are at war.

We waste the word sorry, we trivialize it, and then we allow it to prevent us from forgiving people until it is spoken. Would it not be a better world if it never needed to be spoken again?