Thoughts on saying I’m sorry…
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the expression, “I’m sorry,” which can have many different meanings.
Often when I say I’m sorry for something, I’m faced with the response - “you don’t need to be sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Which makes me wonder what “I’m sorry” means to the person receiving my words - clearly it doesn’t mean the same as what I intended it to mean. I am usually saying I’m sorry for several reasons:
- I’m sorry to hear of what someone is going through (empathy).
- I’m sorry for something I did that didn’t have a good effect on someone else (apology); saying that I didn’t do anything wrong might be an okay response.
- I’m sorry for being something that might not be pleasing to others before they have a chance to say anything. (Submissiveness? Shame? Inherent sense that I’m not worthy?)
The most notable “I’m sorry” story I have is from when I was in Santa Fe, NM on a girls’ trip a few years ago. I said I was sorry to a Native American bartender after he shared his story with us - a story that went back 14 generations across two different tribes and was riddled with horror and tragedy at the hands of Western Colonialism. My friends asked me why I was apologizing as I hadn't done anything wrong - I said, I know I haven't directly done anything wrong(?), but I'm sorry that his generations had to experience what they experienced at the hands of my generations. He looked straight at me and said, “thank you, thank you for saying that and acknowledging what your people did to my people,” - though he added with a wink at the end, and said “don't worry, the Spanish were the worst,”…huh. My friends were still adamant this was not something I had to apologize for - I was not responsible for his generational trauma. I shrugged my shoulders and said, I’m still responsible to acknowledge what his generations experienced at the hands of my generations. End of conversation. Though the thoughts come up over and over again when my friends have corrected me for saying sorry when I didn’t do anything, which causes me to pause and look at the why I said I was sorry. I wonder if I’m carrying on a generational pattern.
My Grandma use to apologize for everything, so much so, she became the butt of many family jokes. I felt empathy for her and curious about the messages she must have received about who she was supposed to be in the world. I can only assume that she inherently believed she could never ever meet those expectations. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to ask her before she passed in 2013. Is that an apology to myself or for her?
When do you notice you say you’re sorry? Is it for something you have done that hurt someone else or is it to apologize for not living up to what your culture or family expects you to do or be? I have an idea that women have a tendency to say I’m sorry a lot more than men do. What do you think? Women apologize for everything - for not being the ‘right weight,’ not looking like we’re supposed to look, for asserting ourselves at work, for saying what we believe in, for just being who and how you are, or quite possibly as a preemptive strike against not being pleasing enough. What does one get out of apologizing for things beyond their control?
When will be the time for you to give up saying you’re sorry for something you truly haven’t done? How might we be able to say I’m sorry and not have it mean we’ve done something wrong? What would that look like? Would the same response from my friends have been different if I was with my guy friends? There seems to be inherent responsibility in saying I’m sorry…how might we revise that so others know we’re not always saying sorry for something we did, but for something that happened to another’s experience? How can one convey the difference?
Maybe I’m looking into this too deeply, so I’m sorry for that. Ha.
XO