Your Bad

Sorry, what? Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. I said I was sorry! I’m apologizing too much? Sorry for that too.

Hee hee. Want to guess what I’m going to talk about today, my honeys?

Surprise! I want to talk about how little apologies really accomplish.

Personally, I hate apologies. Not because they’re fatuous, which they usually are, but because once I get one, I’m supposed to forget that I was ever inconvenienced, offended, hurt and/or all of the above.

Yeah, good luck with that.

I recently had a very dear friend completely & royally screw me over through no fault of his own. (Okay, he could have avoided it and spared my feelings, but he either wasn’t smart enough or brave enough.) Shit happens. He’s still my friend.

Here’s the thing, I got a perfunctory and obligatory “Sorry” in the moment and not one word since.

See what I mean about apologies? I think I’m not supposed to be hurt anymore.

See above, re: good luck with that.

Today’s lesson, my darlings, is how to avoid making people feel the way I feel right now. Sit up, lean forward and pay attention. Auntie’s gonna tell you how to make an otherwise fatuous apology stick.

Put down your hand, you in the front. Of course you have to mean it. You get no points for that.

Maybe the only thing you regret is that things got out of hand. That's fine. You’re honestly sorry you have to deal with a mess. Minimal requirement met.

You still have to make it right.

If you want things to get better, you have to do something about it. The apology just acknowledges that something went wrong on your watch. Big whup. Heroics start when you change your behavior to fix it, or at least to prevent it from happening again.

Yes, you have to get off your ass. Yes, even if you think it wasn’t your fault or if there wasn’t anything else you could have done. Guess what! Almost always, there really was something you could have done.

If you ended up feeling sorry or guilty, just bite down and accept the fact that had you been paying better attention, things wouldn't have gotten so bad.

Then put on your grown-up pants and deal with it.

Exemptions include, amongst others: The neurotic arrogance that makes everything everywhere about you even when it wasn’t, and the corollary, when you’re dealing with an arrogant neurotic who makes everything about them even when it isn’t.

Have I gone on too long? Oops, my bad. Sorry.