Takeaway #4: Apology & grace are intertwined.
When I look at the 20 instances in which I received an apology over the month, I think about how important it was for me to react in a graceful manner. When I felt someone was truly empathizing, I also felt a need to reciprocate that sense of empathy. In just thinking about a few instances, I felt the muscles in my eyebrows relax as I saw evidence of that introspection. My go-to reflex has been, “It’s okay. It happens sometimes,” or “Don’t worry about it,” but maybe I need to be clearer in reciprocating the acknowledgment that something had happened and that there’s an effort to mend it.
Takeaway #5: Make time to apologize to oneself.
Another type of apology I didn’t document in my spreadsheet, but one that rings true, is the apology to oneself. There are times in which I apologize to myself for something I previously did that has impacted me today. It’s admittedly a weird dynamic, but it’s one that lets me recognize how much I’m growing as an individual. It also allows me to practice the art of delivering apologies and the art of receiving apologies. I suppose it is part of self-forgiveness.
The Speed of a Response
The last major dynamic I observed was that good, meaningful and therapeutic apologies often take time to craft, but need to be delivered promptly. Some errors should be apologized for immediately, but many others—those that involve delicate situations, for example—require some time for digesting. A knee-jerk reaction may be counterproductive and a sign of mindlessness. A delay in some cases may be just as bad, showing reluctance to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Ultimately, this is an individualized decision. Among the 37 apologies that I documented over the month, the one with the longest delay was five months. Even though I wish it had been delivered earlier, I was grateful for the apology nevertheless. I’m not sure I would have felt that way if the apology had been delivered five days—or even five years—afterward.
Takeaway #6: Apologies are defined by action, not just words.
Even though we see apologies in their verbal or written form, I would contend that most apologies are actually actions. The words within an apology are meant to be a declaration of intent to change behavior. People who receive apologies are looking carefully at the sincerity of this declaration. An apologizer has to deliver on what they state for future apologies to be credible. At worst, if there are repeated episodes of apologies without any changes, it probably would have been best to avoid the apology to begin with.
