Posts Tagged: sorry but

“Getting Over My ‘Sorry, But’”

On September 4, 2020 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

A friend of mine said that a friend of his said something to him that was very demeaning. He talked to his friend about this the next day. His friend apologized, but then uttered a word that emasculated the apology: the word “but.”

We can apologize, or we can explain. But we can’t do both at the same time about the same issue. We need—I need—to get over our “Sorry, but-ness.”

Another friend of mine said that years ago he had trained himself to simply say that he was sorry, and stop right there. It’s a great practice, but difficult to pull off. I don’t remember, but I suspect that it took him a good while to get good at this practice.

I think that I might be able to learn how to do this, but it might take a lot of biting my tongue until it bleeds. But aside from such a radical approach, there is an even more radical approach. This more radical approach to my sorry but is to think how I feel when someone else “apologizes,” and then launches into a big, “but” that explains away the apology, though not the original offense.

You might accuse me of playing the Golden Rule trump card, and you’d be right. So much of ethics and good relationship skills boils down to treating others as we would like them to treat us. Not as they do treat us, but as we would like them to treat us.

Golden Rule or Sorry But—that seems to be the basic choice. Sorry! I wish it were more complicated, but it isn’t!

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