You Did That to Me Before

I remember one morning before going to school, my son and my daughter had a minor spat. It goes like this: when my eldest son tried to open the door, my daughter’s finger got jammed. Of course my daughter reacted and cried at the same time yelling back. Instead of apologizing, my son brought back a past incident a couple of weeks ago of almost the same nature. But that time he was the victim. This is how he replied “You did that to me before” (yes, I remembered that very well because I was there also when that incident happened). Of course, I reprimanded my son telling him “the past is already the past, for the moment it was your fault, go say sorry to your sister”.

One small minor incident right? Yet something in it struck me. Ever wondered why so many spats (quarrels) were never resolved? How many friendships were ruined? How many marriages had collapsed? Of course by then it’s already serious issues but how did it all started? I bet a lot of them began from trivial matters (almost can be ignored incident) which was dismissed aside without being resolved. A simple case of one party not (do not want to) saying sorry.

One of the most difficult thing to do in life is “to say sorry”. For some other people, they would go in circles to avoid uttering it (pride? or afraid of being mistaken as weak? Or is it just human nature?), not realizing one simple word of apology would had a avoided a lot of unpleasant future pile-ups/consequences.

One of the easiest way to avoid saying SORRY is to make SUMBAT (recalling a past issue). It can be a favor, a loan, a distant boo-boo, a past incident of the same nature. Yet this same practice has led to some of the nastiest quarrels, especially if that past occurrence wasn’t resolved the way it was meant to be. Before long it will go back and forth, the anger and bitterness will accumulate. It’s only a matter of time when the issue will explode. But when we look back and ask ourselves. What triggered everything? You would be surprised to realize that a lot of it are really minor issues (molehills) but already the anger (or at worse the hate) is there. Why? because along the way someone did not say sorry (or something of that sort).

We are human beings born with a logical mind. Somewhere deep inside us, we know what’s right or wrong. We know what happened awhile ago was our fault, but we got tongue-tied when it comes to making amends. A lot of times, it boils to our inability to say 2words “I’m sorry”. That’s why I’ve always admired people who can come over and just tell it to me point blank. That’s why I’ve always term those who can openly admit their mistakes as the “real courageous” ones because it’s a lot easier to get angry and yell at people than go over to people we’ve hurt, humble ourselves and say “Sorry, I screwed up”.