The nature and effectiveness of an apology

Current mood: crushed
Category: Writing and Poetry

I've kind of wondered these past hours about what does it take to feel satisfied by an apology... about those words or actions that make people feel better after something has been hurt, after they have been offended, after something has been broken and needs fixing.We go around life, never knowing when you'll have to apologize or never ready to receive one. And its that, none of us really know how to do it, how to receive it, or actually how to act so you'll never have to apologize at all.Let's see. will attempt to rationalize over these options, in the case any of you are stuck in the sorry situation of being in any of the ends of these umcomfortable parts of life.

How to apologize
Let's say you have done something wrong... it's a small fault... no biggie... you stepped on someone's foot... Immediately turn around and say with a kind of surprised, kind of sad, small hint of a plea: "Oh, I'm so sorry!" You have to watch for the reaction of this person, since a lot of people have not read the second part of this blog that explains how to receive an apology, but most of all what you're looking for in that person's face is how bad you hurt that person's foot. You have no idea if the person has a very sensitive skin, or a foot problem, or its overall very sensitive and if it was the case... it actually didn't hurt at all cause either they are wearing steel toed boots or their foot is fake.Apologizing depends on so many factors of human nature that the event is filled with all the fears that our race is plagued by... threat, discomfort, fear itself, insecurities, you name it... even pride. To apologize to someone, the first thing you actually have to do is recognize the thing that was done wrong... that you actually have hurt someone and if so... recognize the necessity of letting the other party know that you know it was wrong and that you don't feel good about what happened and that ultimately you need them to know that.For all of this to happen... you need to have some insight into what's right and what's wrong... 'cause to apologize, really, you have to know you actually have to do it. The thing about giving an apology is that people shouldn't have to be told they need to apologize. It must come from within that person to be effective; 'cause even if you give it out, and that other person accepts it, it won't be long until that other person realizes that you weren't sincere and the whole thing will be worse than before.Of course, the gravity of this will only be enhanced by the gravity of the fault. Maybe you don't need to worry if that person you stepped on while rushing thru the hall didn't believe your apology, but what if the fault wasn't that mild, what if you betrayed? what if you cheated? what if you lied? what if you did something that requires that other person to really believe you're sorry, but, unfortunately, underachieve in your attempt of letting that person know you know it was wrong?
What if you don't know it was wrong? What if you simply don't want to apologize? I will go on into this topic later on.

How to receive an apology
It hurt, it was unexpected, and it had to be today: the day you decided to wear the strappy Manolo Blahnik sandals that you have been hiding from your dog for 3 years, and now, besides the red spot that threatens to turn into a purple bulge in your fresh pedicured foot, the strap of this cherished shoe, its detached, broken, ruined, ...in one word... lost. Yeah, I'm a girl. This, believe me, in girl world, matters; its effort, its money, its the little girlie stuff inside us that yells "my precious" to a 600$ pair of shoes that mean "I feel wonderful" even when the worst day is ahead of you... And then, there he is, the guy that stomped on your foot... or the girl, cause shit happens. There could be a number of things you could do.. You could scream and curse, you could even cry... you could also listen to see if the harm that can't be undone can be at least lessened by some explanation or some heartfelt apology.
Yeah, there's an option. You can get an apology, and depending on how conscious that other person is, you might in the craziest of times, get a new pair of shoes to mend the harm. Yeah, sometimes, pigs can fly.The thing about receiving an apology is that you depend on the clarity the other person has about reality. You depend on how much the other person is in touch with their own feelings. You depend on the ability of that other person to put themselves in the strappy sandals and walk in that bruised foot. Hell, for what they know, they might have even broken a bone.And then you realize a stomped foot might be the very symbol of how the world turned into this crazy place where we go around and simply don't know when to start apologizing and when to simply give the other cheek, and accept people make mistakes.You look into that person's eyes, and you try, you turn into an investigator, you search for clues, if it was up to you, you'd get all CSI on them and pry open your dusting kit and look for the finger prints of that empathy the person might be feeling over your pain and discomfort. They say they are sorry... but why should you believe them? Is it actions you need? is it urge in their voice? is it that something that even on a letter makes it believable? I think, right there, you have struck gold. There's something really human into making an apology believable; I don't know what it is, but it might be some special sense we're equipped with to recognize when we should accept someone else's recognition of our pain.But then again... what if our pain is too great? What if there are no more of those strappy sandals to replace the broken ones? What if you can't get over the pain? What if the harm went deeper than a broken bone, but to break your spirit, your heart and the very image of yourself?How can you accept an apology, if you ever get one, after you feel so bad that it blinds you?Some of us aren't that advanced into forgiveness to receive an apology from a person, maybe because we're too used to phony excuses, to lies, to insensitivity. And when that happens, even when we run into an honest apology, sometimes, our senses are too clouded to figure out what to do, and go for the easier answer, the human answer, and the age old answer... the violence.And this becomes a vicious circle... for so many reasons: people that don't give apologies, people that don't believe apologies, people that fear apologizing and avoid it at any costs, and people that over bad experiences respond to apologies the worst way the find and traumatize a potential apologizer or apologee to go and spread the madness... humans cannot be sensitive about the fact that they are what they are... simply humans.

How to avoid apologizing and apologies

Yeah, I could go for hours saying how you can do right, how you can be good, how you will never hurt anyone and be free of guilt, pain, deception and sorrow. But is that really living? Now we could try to lessen the harm, we could try to hurt less people, we could try to learn from the pain and see what went wrong so only this time we have to suffer, but never have to visit this place again.Unfortunately, apologies, like pain, cannot be avoided if you have to give them and if you have to receive them, but is up to us to forgive, is up to us to believe in that person's understanding, is up to us to grow into some sense of knowledge of ourselves and how bad it will feel to be in the receiver's end of the pain... and why not? Actually have some soul into our hearts and feel sorry about it and stop the madness.
Yeah, you know them: they travel in packs, they walk funny, they scratch themselves, and they don't apologize. These people can't recognize any event to be sorry for. These people don't feel the necessity of letting another feel relieved by the apology, these people have a limitation to put themselves into the sandals or have chosen not to feel sorry for anything.These people, I think, have a lot to learn. The inability to ask for forgiveness and the inability to forgive have turned our lives into a never-ending race to make the other feel our pain, to make the other feel our wounds, to make the other step into our hell for a single minute... or forever.This analysis didn't come into my mind just for some ethereal study of our environment; it came because, just like this, I stepped into some shoes I never had walked on before. Practical example of an apology situation

I go around life trying my hardest not to hurt anyone, and if I have to do it, I try at least to make them learn something useful from the situation and try my best to put into that person's shoes to know if, really, I have to apologize.When I have to receive an apology, I try not to look a lot into it, because I can't recognize all the time when people are being sincere... let's admit it, we don't have supernatural powers to strip a person of their liar costume, but we try.And at the end, ignorance is bliss, and sometimes, part of the forgiveness... If we don't know we're being played, we may be avoiding a confrontation that might not be worth our time, our pain and our tears.
The bad thing is that I ran into someone that maybe has the inability to step into my shoes, that mattered in my life enough to not be ignored, that couldn't or wouldn't give a truthful apology... and really, I doubt, right now, if he even meant to give one. Is that, again, to give one, you should know why...So before we go and get hurt, before we get "chewed on & spitted out" maybe, just maybe, we need to know why apologizing hardly works these days... People could be amazed if they knew how important they are to a lot of people, sometimes it even means the ability to recover, sometimes it means a closure, sometimes it could give meaning to someone's pain, sometimes it might give purpose to someone's life, sometimes can mean a lot...sometimes it might save one or a million lives.I won't die from not being apologized to, but it made my life a little bit sadder, it made my life a joke, it made my life a little shorter, because like the strappy sandal that was lost by damage... I lost time, I lost my pride, I lost my self respect, I lost my self esteem, I lost my confidence, I lost my ability to trust, I lost something I thought I owned and never did.
In the way, my heart shrunk a little, my ability to be surprised, the ability to believe in people, the ability to find the good in everything and to actually go thru life without expecting an apology, where lost... because there are some actions you can't avoid apologizing for and some actions you can't avoid be apologized for.An apology, a sincere, heartfelt, understanding apology might have avoided me from writing this long attempt to teach, at least one person, the importance of having some retribution after harm and the importance of receiving it. Then again, something good might have happened after all this pain and someone could be picking up the phone to say "I'm sorry." Someone could be forgiving now, someone could end a fight... someone could understand why right now I feel I lost myself in the way and now I'm looking in the mirror and finding a reflection I never had seen before... Someone could choose not to be hated, and actually learn from harm and never make themselves and others suffer from this same pain again.
We come into this world to learn, we might as well do it.