Can You Say I’m Sorry?
The words “I’m sorry” have never come easily to me. It didn’t matter if I was a child who had just gotten in trouble and knew I was in the wrong or last week as an almost half a century old woman, I simply do not like to utter those words. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m accepting defeat or blame, but I have always hated apologizing. What’s funny is that I kept track one time of how many times I said it during a work day and I did it constantly to my students for absolutely no reason at all! Why? I have no idea. But those heartfelt, sincere apologies have never been my forte. It always felt like I was baring my soul to the other person, and I hate to be stripped naked and defenseless to anyone.
On the other hand, my daughter is not this way. She is actually able to apologize and seem to mean it. What an amazing trait! She definitely did not get it from this side of the gene pool. For example, this week she and I weren’t exactly mad at each other but were both kind of irritated with other situations and were a bit snappy with the other. You know how strong females are. My husband tends to stand back and be Switzerland in these situations so he doesn’t get hurt. Such a coward but a wise one. He has quite a few sisters, so he knows how the game goes. I wasn’t really mad at her, but I wasn’t happy with my daughter either. Did you think I was going to apologize? You know the answer to that one. As the parent it’s a power play, even though it’s really not. In this case, she surprised me by apologizing for being so out of sorts and letting it out on me, which made it easy to for me to also apologize for my own less than amicable actions. She said she didn’t want things to be strained between us and she thought about how she had acted and realized she let her mood about other situations out on me. Wow, what mature insight! It completely eliminated the tension between us. Just a few words and voila! Balance was restored!
Does this happen all the time? Absolutely not, but I’ll take it as a win when it does. Besides, before I know it she will be out on her own navigating this big, bad world without anyone who will accept her apologies without question. Most people aren’t very forgiving, and it seems as if everyone is so easily offended these days that it doesn’t matter how sincere you are with your apology that you’re going to inadvertently upset someone. At least, she has this innate ability to apologize versus her mother who sees it as a cardinal sin.
Accepting you made a mistake is a huge step forward in human evolvement. I wish more people could do this, but it seems that fewer and fewer are willing to. This mom is going to try to though. If my almost eighteen-year-old can admit to a mistake then so can I. Maybe apologizing is really a superpower versus a vulnerability after all.
