For My Part in This, I Am Sorry.
I’ve been realizing lately that I have owed someone an apology. I hate it when that happens.
I try to live in such a way that I minimize the number of people I have to apologize to, because I try to live my life based on good principles and a fervent desire to treat others with kindness, compassion and integrity.
Nevertheless, from time to time, I find myself in a position where I need to say sorry for something.
And it turns out this person has been waiting for a long time, much longer than I had realized.
It wasn’t necessarily someone who I thought needed an apology though. It’s funny how you can be around someone for years, and yet be blind to the way things affect them, and when I finally faced the fact that I owed this person an apology, I found myself incredibly reluctant to offer one.
This apology was going to hurt more than they usually do.
Because while this apology was hopefully going to make someone feel better, it was also going to make that same person feel worse.
And I hate receiving apologies almost as much as I hate giving them.
The person that I owed an apology to was myself. If that sounds a little crazy, maybe it is, but in order to realize that I was due an apology I had to first go through the step of realizing that I had played a part in some times in my life that had been pretty difficult.
Before I had always fallen back on the story that sure, I had put myself in places and situations where people could treat me badly, but I always had an explanation for why I had allowed the unjust treatment to continue. In essence, I always had a psychological fallback to absolve myself of the responsibility I could have taken in the situation.
The upside of that was that it allowed me to focus on and blame others who did have their share of responsibility for their actions, but in blaming them, I could essentially offload my responsibility onto them, and thus avoid acknowledgement of my own problems.
It’s incredible how hard our brains will work to find a way to avoid accepting our own share of blame for the problems in our lives.
But I have advanced to a point where I can now see that I was a player in my own problems.
Which means that I owed myself an apology for the things I allowed myself to experience when I COULD have done something different and changed the situation.
It’s a tough thing to accept, the full responsibility for all that you could have done, but didn’t do, but I honestly don’t believe that there is any other way to really advance into happiness than to fully see yourself for you who you.
Because only then can you accept the fullness of yourself, and find peace within that acceptance.
So quietly, gently and honestly, I apologized to myself. It only took a few words, and yet I felt a significant change occur within me.
Because in some strange way I was able to extend to myself forgiveness, while at the same time growing with the acceptance of full responsibility for all that I can do and change in my life. I felt like a weight had been removed in one way, and a lighter one returned in its place.
And I felt like I had grown a little in my journey.
Not that I’m anywhere near where I’m supposed to be. I still have so much work to do, so many lessons to learn, and a multitude of things to get done.
But I can’t help but think that accepting responsibility, receiving an apology and granting forgiveness are going to help me along that pathway.
May we all find forgiveness within ourselves for ourselves, and lighten our steps along our way.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings