I’m Sorry

These words are so overrated, except when they are necessary; it is then that they are badly underemployed. 

In the UK, ‘I’m sorry’ is used so commonly it is virtually meaningless, although everyone knows what it means.  If I inadvertently bump into you – easy in a city as dense as London – I am quick to say sorry, but then so is the person I bumped into.  They surely can’t be apologising to me for something they never initiated.  Even when someone says sorry, they aren’t – it is a simple social convention to say sorry.  It’s our version of ‘have a nice day,’ possibly a polite throw away, excepting for those cases someone actually means it – have a nice day or sorry.   

Then there is saying sorry when it is what we think another person would like to hear or what is expected of us.  We say sorry because it appears right, but if we aren’t actually sorry because we don’t think we did anything wrong in the first place, it doesn’t cut the mustard.  I wonder if these occasions, for all their sincerity, are more an act of obsequiousness than contrition - I feel bad enough to say something but I’m not sure that I need to.  If it is only to keep the peace, it’s as fragile as the eggshells we are dancing around.  Still, better sorry than stay silent at times, even if sorry is more an emotional ice breaker than an actual apology.

Then there is sorry that is necessary, best articulated sooner rather than later.  They say the word most often used in a marriage, for it to be a good marriage, or any relationship for that matter, is sorry.  I love you is important, but it isn’t normally dealing with the potential game breakers that sorry atones for.  I love you is the language of calmer waters.  I’m sorry is for more turbulent seas.  And it can have the same dramatic effect as Jesus stilling the storm. 

When we have caused harm, said something hurtful, or failed to do something, sorry is a very important and, sadly, underused word.  It is here where sorry is necessary.  I didn’t say it was easy – I’m sorry.