Apologies, sorry seems to be the hardest word.
--
Sorry is one of the most powerful words in the English language. It’s cathartic for the person saying it, but equally so for the hard done by receiver. “That’s all I was waiting for, an apology”. But, an apology is slightly different to a sorry, more formal — perhaps suited to a work setting. “I apologise, you’re right I was mansplaining, but now let me explain why”. But what about when your sorry or apology isn’t accepted? “I’m sorry, but I don’t accept your apology”. Or worst, “I forgive but I don’t forget”. How long does one continue to remember for, surely if you’ve forgiven it’s worth forgetting? What is the barometer when one decides to reject an apology and who even invented the word? I’m sorry, but I demand answers to these questions!
The earliest published use of an apology on record comes from the title of a work by Sir Thomas More, the Catholic humanist and social philosopher of Henry VIII’s court. The word appears in his 1533 work Apologye of Syr Thomas More, Knyght. However, the first published use of a word is not the same thing as the first actual verbal use of it, so I’m taking a wild guess that it was God who first said it. “I’m sorry, guys I’ve really messed up. Look, you’ll have some good times, but for the most part life as a human will be a bleak existence. I got drunk one night and decided as an experiment to give you all an ego, which will ultimately destroy you and the planet. And I know there will be loads of you praying to me, but I’m afraid a lot of those prayers will remain unanswered. I’m just super busy rn! If only I had an assistant”. And that’s when Jesus came onto the scene.
But unfortunately he didn’t last long because our egos got the better of us. So now we had two Gods to pray to and blame (well son of and Father): “Jesus Christ, for Gods sake, what have you done?!” To which God, now officially a boss and in a work setting, meekly apologised and we being the flawed beings that he/she/they created replied, “we forgive, but we won’t forget!” And that’s why we eventually replaced technology and social media as our Gods, it was a middle finger to the original OG. “So you thought it would be funny to give us an ego? Well watch our egos run amok on Instagram! We’ll be so busy taking selfies that we’ll have no time to pray to you, because our new God is the technology that owns our arses”. And with that, I apologise for colonizing your attention span with a meaningless article on the word sorry. I hope you will forgive, but not forget me.
