Word Prompt – SORRY – Bin Goldman

One of the first things we teach children after they hurt someone is to say, “I’m sorry.” Sometimes they mean it. Sometimes they’re mostly waiting to be released back to the playground.

Adults get better at the wording. I’m not sure we always get better at the thing itself.

A real apology asks us to stay for a few moments with an uncomfortable fact: I did something that hurt you. That is harder than it sounds. We explain. We add context. Or we sink into shame and start feeling so terrible about ourselves that, somehow, the injured person winds up reassuring us.

I know the impulse. If I can explain myself well enough, maybe the whole thing will hurt less. Maybe I can get back quickly to being the person I thought I was before you told me what I did.

There is something in teshuvah that asks for a little more room than that. Enough room to see what happened and let it matter, or to hear another person’s experience without needing to immediately fix my own.

That may require a surprisingly sturdy sense of self. If being wrong means that I am bad, I will fight very hard not to be wrong. If I can believe that I am still worth something while facing what I did, responsibility becomes easier to bear.

Maybe that’s part of what we’re trying to teach a child when we say, “Tell him you’re sorry.”

Not the magic word. The ability to remain there long enough for it to mean something.