Pardon?

Ready to move onto the next skin crawling moment? Here is the next quote that got my panties in a twist: “The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest and the first to forget is the happiest.”

Again, there are many examples where this thought is spot on. I don’t think I need to explain to you when they are as I imagine you have many examples at your disposal.

The problem is that I think this whole idea is overused and even abused. I think that we often seek to fix things that we believe have gone awry and we give ourselves a gigantic pat on the back because we were the first one to say that we are sorry.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I can tell you that I can clearly recollect situations whereas I or someone else confiding in me has uttered ‘well, s/he is clearly not going to apologize first, so I guess I’ll be the bigger person here.’ I can tell you that in these situations, when these words are spoken, there is often no true understanding as to why an apology is being offered up on silver platter, other than to fix the thing. Mend the fence. End the fight.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you apologize to someone and they ask what you are sorry for and then awkward silence or fumbling on words ensues? Like oh shit, that wasn’t part of the plan. I was supposed to say that I’m sorry and they were supposed to accept my apology and that was supposed to be that. I am a champion for humbling myself to be the party who offered it up first, and that is enough. Is it though and should it be? No and nope.

The real issue is that this entire thought process is part of a much bigger problem in our society. It’s the whole hug and make up paradigm that most parents or guardians push like it’s going out of style. One kid complains that another kid (perhaps their sibling) has wronged them. The parent implores the child accused of wrong doing to apologize in order to smooth things out. Often, the parent or guardian or babysitter or whomever doesn’t waste time exploring what actually occurred. They just encourage an expedient fix.

I can tell you that I grew up in a lovely home. LOVELY. Not without issues but I was generally a lucky human in that regard. My sister and I would fight from time to time. We had a particular fondness for fighting in the back seat of the car. My mother’s most favored response to this situation was to explain that she and her brother and her sister (that’s right, three humans, not two), managed to share a backseat without killing each other. There was no need for us to behave in such an animalistic fashion and the best thing for us to do would be to apologize to each other and stay the fuck out of each other’s way. I will tell you that often our fights were immature and nonsensical. That stated, there is something about the practice of exploring why we were at each other’s throats that would have been a valuable exercise for the both of us. Even if we were laughing at our own pettiness at the end of it.

I’m going to keep going with this narrative because it is such a beautiful fit. Sometimes, one of us would apologize and the other would refuse to, preferring to sit self-righteously and sullenly beside our sibling. The girl who apologized was the champion. Thank YOU child for being the bigger person. The bigger person? What the fuck does that mean?

I think this is very common and goes on all the damn time and has created this massive cultural issue whereas we deem ourselves the winner of the thing when we manage to get to the ‘sorry’ finish line first. The sincerity of that apology doesn’t matter (in our car, there was often a smirk and tongue sticking out following the utterance of those words) and the recognition of what caused the harm is irrelevant. The person who manages to buck up and apologize first is the victor and that is that. Although all is not lost. If the other human receiving the apology manages to graciously accept said apology, they are now a close runner up. Don’t even get me started if you offer an apology in return. You know what that looks like, don’t you? “Thank you. I’m sorry too.”

FOR WHAT?! YOU ARE APOLOGIZING FOR WHAT? Pardon me, I’d like to match your bullshit apology with mine so that I too can get credit for something entirely nonsensical. Thank you very much.

Sigh. Nope.

And forget the forgetting bit. Forgetting? Well sure, sometimes forgetting is good, I guess. But is it? Why do you need to forget something? I’m not suggesting that I support the accumulation of grudges or emotional ammunition, but isn’t there something to be said for a learning curve that occurs because we recall situations whereas friction was caused, deliberately or inadvertently? If we are constantly Dory swimming around this big ol’ ocean we call life (watching ‘Finding Nemo’ for goodness sake, or at least google Dory and her memory issues), are we going to develop emotionally? Will we even have a chance to grow into compassionate, sentient beings?  

Apologies are essential when they are genuine and come from a true place of understanding. Acceptance of apologies is fantastic when the person has reconciled the apology and determined it to be acceptable and has moved beyond whatever has necessitated the apology. Forgetting is okay when there is a situation that is of literally no consequence whatsoever. Outside of that, no one should be getting a gold medal for engaging in any of these emotional activities. The very thought that one would be rewarded for this behavior challenges the notion of what it means to apologize, accept an apology, and move on from something that caused us pain.

We desperately crave things being nice and so even though we are apt to act like assholes because we are human, we are more comfortable glossing over everything to bring life back to even keel again. You can do that, for sure. Plenty of people do. But if you really want to change and find the best version of yourself, I contend that this entire mindset is counter to that kind of progress. You have to get gritty. You have to dig in. You have to do the work.

More soon.

L.