The Forever Apologizer Is Learning To Grow

 A few years ago, I apologized to a chair.

I was walking through the living room with a basket of laundry and I tripped over the side of our ottoman, knocking into the armchair and sending it into the wall.

Gah! Sorry, I muttered under my breath, re-positioning the chair, surveying the nick in the wall’s paint, up-righting the toppled basket with my other hand. Tim hears me from the kitchen, looks up, and says:

Did you just say Sorry to the furniture?

I did.

This has always been a storyline of mine. In a long practiced habit of twisted empathy, I can’t not acknowledge when my actions affect someone (or clearly something) else, and the best way to do that, it had seemed, was to apologize for it.

I’m sorry, I’m confused.
I’m sorry, I don’t agree.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand.

I’m sorry, chair.

What I’m learning, currently, is that small things are sometimes just small things. Random. Personality tics, idiosyncrasies, quirky mannerisms.

And sometimes small things are bigger.

Last month, one of my friends – a fellow over-apologizer – pointed me to a small piece of advice:

Don't say I'm sorry when you should say thank you.

I’m sorry I’m late accepts fault for things you may or may not have been able to control, not entirely at least. Your kid’s last-minute skinned knee. A (real) traffic jam. The weather.

Thanks for your patience acknowledges that you’re late, and that being late isn’t ideal, and that as a result of your late-ness, the other person has (hopefully) granted you patience by waiting.

And that requires a Thank you.

I’m sorry is an apology for your shortcomings.
Thank you is an acknowledgement of others’ virtues.

I am very frequently saying ‘Sorry’ when I mean to say ‘Thank you’, and my girlfriend is very frequently, very gently, reminding me to knock it off.

Don’t apologize for your feelings. Don’t apologize for being a human. Accept it, thank others, move on.

I’ve been practicing. Just last week, I’d been feeling like this – sad, gloomy, blah – and typically, I’d begin the barrage of apologies. I’m sorry, I’m just in a sad mood. I’m working on it.

But instead, this: Thanks for bearing with me. I know I was down today. I totally appreciate you giving me grace.

Tim smiled, said he was happy to, but may have been wondering where his little apologizer had gone.

It’s a small thing.
It’s a big thing.

I’ll probably continue to mix up apologies with acknowledgements. I’ll probably twist the two together and bend toward the apology time and time again, succumbing to the default, saying Sorry to the furniture.

But.

It’s nice to practice a different way, too. It’s nice to save the Sorry's for the times I need it, for the times that matter, for the hearts I hurt, for the marks I miss.

And for all of the other times, it’s nice to say Thank you. 

Be The Thermostat

 I do not consider myself to be a leader by nature, nor a follower. Perhaps I identify most with the term “observer,” far preferring to sit at the proverbial corner table and watch the world unfold as it does with little interference from me.

If you asked, I’d tell you I’m an empath. I can sense when you’re feeling heavy or light, whether you’re overwhelmed or tense, how your emotions might dictate our plans. I observe, observe, observe. I react accordingly, adjusting my own demeanor based on the given mood, or moment.

And sure, while important to offer flexibility, this does not often bode well. We can only do so much observing-and-reacting before we’re required to steer the ship from emotion and circumstance to truth and perspective. And so, a small reminder for myself:

Be the thermostat!

While I’m prone to measuring the temperature, to reading the room, to quietly adjusting my own layers to better acclimate, a thermostat declares the room cold and makes it warm.

We all hold in ourselves the power to transform – in ways small and large – a room, a year, a life. We can make it hot or cold. We can make our homes into caves or havens; we can make our days stretch or snap.

It is ours to decide, and we must decide.

Yesterday, we woke up in sad moods. The clouds hung low outside the window, mocking our attitudes. I puttered around per usual – frying eggs, washing pans, doing laundry – and as the day went on and the breakfast wore off, the sun still hadn’t come out. My responses felt sad.

I practiced deep breaths, settled in for a tea and reading break, and willed myself to snap out of it. As I read a peace washed over me and I was reminded:

Be the thermostat. Set the tone. Rise above. You’re the grown-up. Make it warm.

In very little time, with very little effort, the energy of the room changed and my mood was lifted. 

Eventually, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, but it didn’t matter: the house was warm and bright enough without it.

Learning to grow

On the night of a bad day, I wonder if people truly change. If we’re all just out here screwing each other up or if there is, as I’ve been taught, a capacity for a better way.

Can the envious toss away layers of green? The angry encounter peace? Can the yeller stop yelling?

And then I read this:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

I used to think this was an old verse about material goods, about how meaningless it was to amass objects void of permanence. You can’t take it with you, and all that. I used to think this was a simple reminder that we’re wasting precious hours adding another chunky knit sweater to our cart, or fretting over our 10-year plan.

And yet, when I re-read it, later mulling it over at the kitchen sink washing dishes, I think it might be about tomorrow, sure, but also yesterday.

I reminded me of an article I read about sea cucumbers. 

Do you know of them? Their ability to regenerate, or as I read their capability “to grow and to grow again?” Sea cucumbers, as a defense, can release their organs to a predator, slipping away to be quietly reborn in 1-5 weeks. Spending themselves entirely. Allowing themselves to be made new.

Waiting patiently, week after week, knowing restoration is already happening within them. Knowing change is on its way.

They do not sow their failures, reap their mistakes. They do not store away each hurt. They do not cater to their wounds and they do not cling to their scars.

Instead: they spill their guts, surrender their insides, become reborn.

They regenerate, and regenerate again.

It sounds a bit like mercy, I think. And patience. Quietly, expectantly awaiting your own small and many rebirths. Delivering them, then allowing them to deliver you.

Look at the sea cucumbers to learn and grow yourself into a more resilient you!