When I was young, my mum said to me there are 3 words that I must always remember – Sorry, Thank You and Please. You can never go wrong with these, she said. I have followed her advice to the t. I have ‘please-d’ and ‘thank you-d’ my way through tough situations and have gotten out of major trouble by ‘sorry-ing’. However, I realised recently, these 3 words are great - they teach you to take into consideration other people’s feelings and be polite but they are also the most manipulative (for the want of a better word... ruthless maybe?) 3 words in the English language. How easily we walk away from unpleasant situations, a situation where we know we have probably hurt the other person a lot, with a shrug of the shoulder, nod of the head and a simple sorry. I’m not the one to talk. I’ve done it too. Somehow, we seem to equate the number of times we say sorry to the amount of guilt we harbour about the situation. I don’t know if it’s just me but I know for a fact I dislike being reminded of the situation. Most of the situations when I’m at fault, I say sorry and back off, give the other person enough time to process what’s happened and hope once they feel up to it they will talk to me and I guess I expect the same sort of behaviour from others as well. Hence, it’s no surprise when I say if I was being inundated with apologies through phone calls, texts and various other forms of communication, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I need my time to be able to deal with the situation - on my own. Somehow I don’t think forcing sorry down my throat would solve the problem. Neither would justifying yourself a million times because I think people justify themselves only to feel better about the situation. What you have done and said is over and you can only assuage your guilt by explaining. Time is more powerful than we give it credit for, definitely more powerful than empty words, meaningless sorry and unneeded explanations. Let time work its course, it might be exactly what you and the other person needs.
