“When an Apology Is Anything But”
“we haven’t addressed the deeper meaning of these “sorrys.” To me, they sound like tiny acts of revolt, expressions of frustration or anger at having to ask for what should be automatic. They are employed when a situation is so clearly not our fault that we think the apology will serve as a prompt for the person who should be apologizing.
It’s a Trojan horse for genuine annoyance, a tactic left over from centuries of having to couch basic demands in palatable packages in order to get what we want. All that exhausting maneuvering is the etiquette equivalent of a vestigial tail.”
I also think it would be an interesting world if we stopped using “sorry” for intentional apologies too, and actually had to fully articulate an apology. Because I think that “I’m Sorry” really just means “now it’s the time in the conversation for you to forgive me”.
It’s also a kind of unnecessary self-deprecation; ‘sorry’ as an adjective describes a sort of pathetic and unfortunate figure. Why are we debasing ourselves when we’ve done something wrong, as though this action has fundamentally altered who we are? What we’re supposed to express is “I acknowledge the negative thing I’ve caused, and I wish it hadn’t happened” and the most productive response to that isn’t to then injure ourselves as though that is justice — the most productive response is to focus on the impacted person and determine if there is something we can do to return them to a non-negative state.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking critically about the times when I say “I’m sorry”.
