Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
A busy working mum takes her child into the supermarket. He’s a tall boy of seven, with dark, intelligent eyes, a puppy dog smile and a slight lisp when he speaks.
A casual observer would see the boy charging up and down aisles with the energy of a springer spaniel — keen to be involved, full of grins and noisy with it.
A closer look would show us something slightly odd. Each time the boy returns to his mother’s side, he thrusts his left hand in her face. The hand is grubby, inked with letters. The third time the hand flashes in front of her, the bemused woman reads the word he’s written there in pen:
“Sorry”
Many times — many, many times — up and down the aisles, the hand appears before the woman’s face. When asked to explain, the lad smiles his gap-toothed, seven-year-old smile at her. He shrugs, sheepishly, his hand outstretched between them. It speaks for him with the only word he has.
Behind his smile there’s a flicker of fear. Look closely enough and you can read the question in his eyes as the little boy asks his mum, repeatedly, without saying a word,
“Will you still love me, when you find out what I’ve done?”
It’s only when they return to their Land Rover that the mother’s forgiveness is truly tested. The back seats — the camel-coloured, plush, velour seats — are now covered in inky-black, seven-year-old scribbles and doodles, sketches and letters, numbers and words. Covered.
Oh boy.
Sorry is a powerful word. But it’s not going to shield this kid from the pain of that picture as it hits his mother’s amygdala.
Fortunately, this boy’s mother is a gifted youth-worker. After a moment of piercing anguish, marked by a sound somewhere between a moan and a shrieking wail, she stops short.
Her son once more stands before her, his sorry-hand outstretched. Bottom lip trembling. Eyes wet. Fearful.
The woman looks beyond her car to its much more precious cargo. Her son is learning. He messes up. It’s only a car seat. Oh boy.
Once home, they get stuck in, tackling the challenge together. Scrubbing the seats, elbow to elbow, they seek their own answer to the question, ‘Is indelible ink really indelible, or is it just a marketing hyperbole…?’ (You have to try, don’t you?)
The episode soon becomes something they can both laugh about. He has learned this lesson, there will be plenty more...
Reading Seth Godin’s blog: The confusion about “sorry”, made me think afresh about the word and its impact.
Godin focuses us on the distinction between the sorry we might say when we are at fault, and the empathic sorry we may use when we are not.
Thinking about the former, with the child’s ‘Sorry’-hand in mind, brings home a poignant truth:
There’s no worse feeling than knowing you’ve messed up.
The story above stands out in my mind. What extraordinary emotional self-management skills this mother must have had, to absorb her anguish so fast! What a pivot, to look beyond the shock of behaviour, to look past the shielding ‘Sorry’-hand, to see the frightened soul within.
Here was a woman practised in opening her heart to children in trauma. The state of her car seats was nothing compared to the state of her child’s psyche as he registered the effect of his own behaviour’s cause. She didn’t need to punish him, to make him feel any more sorry about what he’d done. He was already there.
How many of us could be so measured in our response to such an event? No person alive can maintain perfect balance. Oh, that we could! No parent looks back without anguish at times when they feel they messed up in their responses to their child.
The ‘Sorry’ son’s desperation to dig himself out of trouble is poignant indeed. Cause and effect pathways lagged behind impulsivity and experimentation in this little boy’s brain. His development was pitted with shocks and surprises.
Some children seem to arrive on the planet in a Formula One racer — the slightest tap on the pedal and they’re wrapped around a tree. (Most children drive a go-cart through their early years — far easier on the parent!)
Perhaps many Formula One children will wind up over apologising as adults. Even apologising in advance, because they know it won’t be long before the next bump in the road. Julie Andrews comes to mind here, playing the novice nun Maria in The Sound of Music:
“You know how Sister Berthe always makes me kiss the floor after we’ve had a disagreement? Well, lately I’ve taken to kissing the floor whenever I see her coming, just to save time.”
Other Formula One kids of course, will take the opposite approach and refuse to apologise. Perhaps they are so traumatised by the frequency of the negative feedback they can’t help but receive, that it’s the only way to survive the deluge of disapproval they face.
Of course, there are many other dynamics resulting in children living with significant levels of perceived disapproval. Children reared by parents suffering from mental illness, potentially, for one.
Children are wired to seek approval from the responses of their parents. Where parents struggle emotionally, or even when they are just emotionally distant, children may perceive themselves to be at fault. There are myriad ways in which children may sense disapproval from their carers. And they will find different ways to cope with the ‘small t’ trauma this creates.
Because disapproval is traumatising. Regardless of the response we get. Whether we show it overtly or not, whether we recognise it inside ourselves or not, there’s no worse feeling than ‘knowing’ we’ve messed up. Over-apologising can become a self-protection strategy.
Pondering apology from these angles calls to mind the expression:
“Love means…
never having to say you’re sorry.”
— Eric Segal
This — from the popular film screenplay, ‘Love Story’, may be clichéd, but it is at the heart of unconditional love, isn’t it?
The quest to love unconditionally leads us to own our emotions and reactions. If we see ourselves as responsible for our happiness, we would not imagine that anyone else would have to power to diminish it.
No apologies would ever be necessary if we saw ourselves as utterly in charge of our lives. If we truly knew that our happiness comes from the thoughts we have about our perceived reality, we would give all our focus to choosing our thoughts...
If I’m with you, I get to choose how I think about what you bring into my world. I get to use your behaviour to feel good, or to feel bad, depending on the thoughts I have about it.
If you miss an appointment with me, I can choose to feel relaxed and easy about it, thinking:
“Everything works out well for me, I’ll enjoy this unexpected free slot.”
And I get the double pleasure of pouring my compassion out on you, knowing that I’m being the most loving version of myself and you’ve given me the opportunity to experience that.
I know that’s an easy example. Some people stretch unconditional love to pinging point and beyond. Hell, there are people we don’t want to love unconditionally. They don’t deserve it, right?
But striving to love unconditionally ultimately frees us from the notion that those people we find most challenging can cause us harm. If we need their apologies, we are giving our power away to them.
When we find our way to the source of love and joy and goodness inside ourselves, we don’t need it from anyone outside ourselves. We can love ourselves whole.
I love that notion.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to say sorry if I know I’ve messed up. I couldn’t not. And the research supports the importance of apologies which can…
“… soothe vengeful feelings, engender forgiveness, increase empathy for the offender, repair damaged interpersonal ties, and speed cardiovascular recovery from anger.”
— Anderson, Linden, & Habra, 2006; Darby & Schlenker, 1982; Lazare, 2004; McCullough et al., 1998;
But I love offering others the safety of knowing that I take responsibility for my own happiness. That they can mess up around me and I will not hold them responsible for any impact it has on me. I want my loved ones to know that I love them that much…
And as for the less loveable ones, well, I want my wellbeing intact. I’m going to keep loving myself joyful, so the less loveable ones don’t get a look in.
But what about the second kind of sorry — Saying sorry when it’s NOT our fault?
A few years back, receiving training from the local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, we were exploring, through role play and discussion, how to talk a person down from high levels of emotional distress and agitation.
The trainers were very clear.
“Say that you’re sorry. The words begin to build the bridge.”
“I’m so sorry,” these words have a calming effect on the brain. The trainers explained further —
“You don’t have to take responsibility for the situation.
You just have to let the kid know that you’re sorry it’s happening.”
That really struck a chord with me. How powerful, to know that these words would immediately offer relief!
Researchers investigating the ‘sorry’ phenomenon, found tangible evidence of the connection the word alone creates. In a fascinating Harvard Business School study, a researcher in a busy train station, on a very wet November day, asked people if he could borrow their mobile phone.
The experiment compared the results when the scientist began his request with “I’m so sorry about the rain,” — a seemingly absurd apology — with the results of the simple request alone.
The impact of the superfluous apology was profound. 47% of the people offered apologies for the rain handed over their mobile phone to a stranger, compared to a mere 9% in the second group.
The power of words to heal or wound is profound.
The Law of Attraction states that we can’t assert healing or wounding, in truth, into another’s experience. But we can certainly offer influence by our choice of words and the emotional stance from which we speak.
When I love unconditionally, I don’t need you to say ‘Sorry’, when you’re at fault.
We don’t need apologies when we see ourselves as loved and strong and confident. When we love ourselves profoundly, that love spills out to others and there is no need for their ‘Sorry’.
This doesn’t mean there’s no space for the word, when fault is imagined. It can bring relief and reconnection to the one who feels they’ve done wrong.
When it’s not my fault, saying “I’m so sorry…” may offer comfort to the distressed.
Apologising when we are not at fault can be an expression of compassion, a hand offered in pity, a much-needed moment of shared human experience, where, for a brief time we may help another feel a little less alone.
Here’s to a world where we never need apologise except when it’s not our fault.