Cleaning Up the Wreckage Part V: “Please Forgive Me!”
May 31st, 2010
Over the past few articles, I’ve been exploring the mysterious world of getting your mental, emotional and spiritual house in order through the essential process of reconciliation. I’ve often stated that midlife brings about a deep spiritual transformation in those who allow the process to move forward. It serves as the doorway into the world of maturity which takes us as far beyond adulthood as adulthood once took us away from childhood. Yet, this transformation that brings us an unparalleled measure of both inner strength and serenity is impossible without first cleaning up the wreckage that we’ve created all around us by our mistakes and/or poor judgment. Reconciliation is not optional for anyone who desires to grow and develop.
We’ve been following the masterful lead of Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas who wrote the book, The Five Languages of Apology. We’ve explored at some depth the first four “languages” that need to be spoken before our relationships can be healed: “I messed up!” “I’m sorry!” “What can I do?” and “I won’t do that again!” Yet, if we find that we’re among those who want a ‘quick fix’ and instant relief from guilt without having t0 do the hard work that it entails, we may be looking for the other (be it our human relationships, our relationship with our Higher Power, or our relationship with our own selves) to release us from the consequences of our actions gratuitously. Whether or not we’re ready to admit it, we seek forgiveness; whether it will have any meaning for us or not (that is: whether or not it’ll make any practical difference) totally depends on the effort that we’ve been willing to make to create positive change.
“Insanity,” said Albert Einstein, “is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results.” That quote has been so frequently quoted in the recent past that it rivals the popularity of anything that Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac has to offer. What’s more, like Franklin’s aphorisms, this one is based in solid fact. If nothing changes, nothing changes. When you’ve made a mess, apologizing for it and even making amends for it means very little if you’re unwilling to do make the effort to change the root causes that led you to create the mess in the first place. This is one infallible piece of evidence that will allow you to distinguish a genuine apology from mere face-saving (or, even worse, mere posturing): How far is the apologist prepared to go to do things differently from now on?
A relationship is a living thing. Every one of them requires nurturing and protection, otherwise it may all too easily become injured, sicken, weaken, and even die; and, for us human beings, relationships are not optional: they literally make up the fabric of our very being. Scientists discovered a long time ago that infants who were not touched and held, although otherwise healthy and strong, would before long wither and die. We cannot live without relationships anymore than we could live in a two-dimensional world. Life without depth would be meaningless. Even hermits, who go off to live their lives in seeming isolation from ‘the world,’ speak of how they intentionally and virtually bring the whole world with them into their hermitage. Though isolated, they are not alone.
Do you find yourself carrying around with you an enormous bag of ‘I’m Sorrys,’ doling them out liberally to everyone you encounter? Many people do, you know. They not only apologize for being in other people’s way, it’s as though they’re apologizing for taking up space in other people’s universe, and breathing other people’s air. Let’s spend a few minutes together looking at what’s going on when we apologize. There are at least four approaches to the art of apology, only one of which is at all effective in helping to clean up the wreckage that bad choices have left behind.
Few of us make it through to maturity without leaving a mess behind themselves: a tangle of broken dreams, broken promises, and broken relationships. Each false step along the way and each wrong turn leaves its imprint somewhere in your psyche. Most of these faux pas are small and relatively unimportant in the great scheme of things, but, especially at midlife, they can add up. When you have collected enough of these sources of embarrassment, it’s only a matter of time before just one or two more can cause you to collapse into despair. It’s never too soon to tackle cleaning up the messes you’ve made.
