Don't duck and dive, just say Sorry

Pic. by Ni Shu

For a word so small, wars have been fought, jobs have been lost, siblings have become estranged, and marriages have collapsed, among other avoidable unpleasant stuff. People just cannot bring themselves to say sorry.

If we look back at our lives, we will probably find a trail of damage to relationshipswhich could have simply been mended by saying sorry, and showing we meant it. After seeing we have offended someone, we would rather justify our actions or things we said to hurt the other person, blame them for being too sensitive, or give lengthy explanations that actually don’t mean anything to someone we’ve hurt.

I think it all boils down to abominable pride, ego, and rigidity, and sheer bad manners. We think that by apologising we’ve emerged losers out of the disagreement, and the person we’ve offended has won.Apologising has nothing to do with winning or losing, it is about doing the right thing, showing our worth as balanced human beings. Doing the right thing is not always easy, but it has to be done. We lose nothing from it. If anything, we gain respect by showing that we accept that we are not infallible, we make things right after making mistakes.

We don’t even have to wait to be told that we have offended someone. More often than not, we know immediately after making the offensive action or remark that we are out of line. An apology does not serve its purpose when the offended party has to fish for it. Then we start a long and meandering tale about how our actions were not meant to offend, we accuse the person we’ve hurt of being too sensitive because what we said was only a light-hearted joke, orwe accuse people of driving us into the offending actions. Instead of pacifying, we actually aggravate.  Then we say things like, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that”, or “I withdraw my statement”. That doesn’t even begin to cut it. Sometimes all we have to say is “I was wrong. I’m sorry.” If the other person asks for an explanation, then we give it to them. Is ruining a good relationship or someone’s day,owing to our reluctance to say sorry, worth it? Do we feel better about ourselves when we refuse to say sorry even when we know we are wrong? Do we feel we’ve achieved something? Even though we might look like little heroes in our eyes, to everybody else we simply look like pig-headed fools.

I think the refusal to apologise is ingrained in our culture, at least in some families. If a parent wrongs his child, no matter how old, and the child expresses dismay, that child is accused of insubordination. A child like that might grow up thinking grown-ups should never apologise. The unbalanced ones probably look forward to having children of their own to demand apologies from, without ever giving any.

It is usually those that love us or that work closely with us that we won’t apologise to. When we bump strangers with our trollies at the supermarket, we gush with apologies, “Oh no! Are you OK? I’m really sorry I wasn’t looking!” Then when it comes to people we love, we would rather dig in our heels, stubborn as mules. Instead of saying sorry, we foam at the mouth and accuse people we’ve hurt of misunderstanding us. Shame on us, shame.

Can we then pat ourselves on the back and say well done to ourselves for refusing to acknowledge our mistakes? We should just learn to swallow our pride, it’s not fattening.

Failure,or reluctance, to apologise makes people ugly. Sometimes you look at someone who evidently knows they have offended someone but is too proud to say sorry, and you have this nagging feeling that somewhere inside their chest must be an old, black and shriveled little heart. For if they had a real one they would realize that hurting others is not cool. We should do as we would be done by.

For most, I guess saying sorry is like an art that has to be mastered before it can be executed. The same way some of the world’s greatest musicians were made in the privacy of their showers, maybe we should start by rehearsing apologies again and again until we can do it – properly. It would be a beautiful world if we could do that for ourselves and others.

We should inculcate a culture of apologizing in our children or younger people that look up to us by apologizing to them when we err. This will show them that we offend other people sometimes, but we have to concede that we were wrong and make amends.