The power of sorry when “sorry” stays sorry

The most powerful moment in any relationship is righting a wrong immediately.

But we only need to have been in such a situation and there are multiple barriers to be overcome if it’s us who is righting our own wrong—when we’ve caused the harm.

Firstly, it’s us having the awareness of our wrong, and secondly, it’s having the humility to pour contempt on our pride so we can just begin saying the words to convey our remorse.  Actually, awareness also requires humility.

It also takes humility to STAY sorry.

We know this all too well when wrongs are executed against us, when injustice grows upon our awareness to the point that we really need an apology to be able to continue on in the relationship.

It’s not just trust that’s eroded in relationships where apologies don’t come.  The sense of injustice piles up gradually to the point where the one-way nature of the relationship must finally be faced.  We arrive at a place where we must concede that, “This really isn’t working.”

Where apologies don’t come, where a person cannot or will not reflect on the harm that they do, where they can only see injustice that happens to them and nobody else—there, right there, is a person incapable of having and holding a relationship.

The capacity of a person to own the effect of their behaviour is maturity—and the capability is of safe, effective relationship.  Such a person is in touch with the capacity to be honest, to be humble, to empathise with the other person, to be courageous and sacrificial for relationships’ sake.  It takes two people or two parties to behave like this to have a viable, healthy relationship.

When a person has the humility to see, own, and honour the truth, they apologise, and they STAY sorry.  Their apology isn’t conditional on the response of the person being apologised to.

Indeed, we know a fake apology by how it slips out of the sorry gear when the person hearing the apology won’t forgive it straight away—or they’re not satisfied that the apology is meant or even that it’s enough.  It’s okay to be suspicious if we feel we’re being manipulated.

Fake apologies are said to appease the other party, to get off the hook, to move on, to get the relationship back on equal terms—without paying due remorse.  Manipulation, in a word.

But effective apologies work because the sorry person STAYS sorry.  They understand that what they did was wrong, will always be wrong, and can never be right.  Even when they’re forgiven, the wrong isn’t right because the wrong will always be wrong, but mercy has been granted for which they can be thankful.  Sufficient remorse means they’re not going to bargain their way out of it.  And indeed, this is what often makes this kind of apology worth forgiving—THEY GET IT.

The power in the apology that STAYS sorry is it commands forgiveness because the injustice has been corrected.  In owning the wrong that will always be wrong in their view they earn the mercy of forgiveness.

Even after forgiveness is done, the person who did the wrong knows it will always be wrong—yet, they’ve been forgiven, and they don’t feel condemned because they own what they did—they take, and took, responsibility.

The sorrow that seeks to acquit itself is a force 
for good where the ultimate desire is truth.

Think about it: those who revere the truth are
the most trustworthy of individuals,
because the truth is more important than their ego.

Somehow, the wrong that was done was done by the person, but they can sufficiently distance themselves from the shame of it by simply owning it and saying it was and always will be wrong.  They insist it was wrong.

In this is a trustworthy person, 
because in seeing truth, in revering truth, 
there is an honouring of the truth.
YES!  Even in the moment they’re wrong.

The biggest personal lesson for each of us in all our relationships is to see truth and to live by it.  If we’re wrong, we’re sorry, no ifs, buts or maybes about it.  No excuses.  There’s no lack of diligence in learning everything we can about it so we can truly and fully understand.

Embracing what we can learn 
from our failures is true humility.
It crushes guilt and shame seeing 
how debilitating these traits are.

The only acquittal that makes any sense to us is the acquittal where all are free from the wrong, for it’s seen that justice must be done.