What is the true purpose of an apology?
WE humans can be so impossibly human. We can take a potentially elevated moment and reduce it to an act of self-preservation, completely missing the opportunity for connection and transcendence.
What is the true purpose of an apology? In an effective apology we step into the shoes of the wronged party and convey that we truly feel, or at least understand, the pain we caused and the harm engendered. That pain is real regardless of mitigating circumstances. To touch the soul of the other is to own and acknowledge that pain. Hard stop.
Unsurprisingly, having to apologize puts us in an uncomfortable position that we prefer to avoid. By and large, we’re decent people who don’t want to hurt others, especially not those we love. (The fact that we hurt those we love more than anyone else is just part of the world design, but that’s for another day.) Seeing and acknowledging that behavior can make us squirm internally; it activates our defenses and puts them in high gear.
We want to know, and we want others to know, that we are not bad people and that our behavior was justified. But justified or not, we were the messengers of pain. The first step in ameliorating that pain is seeing it reflected in the other person’s eyes and truly apologizing for having caused it.
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