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Do you ever pay attention to the times when you say the words “I’m sorry”? It’s a very common terms these days as people are saying “sorry” for a variety of reasons, but does this mean that we don’t truly understand the meaning of the word, or does it imply that we no longer care what it means as long as we say it? I thought I’d explore this question further.
Consider the following scenarios:
A family sits down to dinner. The youngest is serving and accidentally knocks over the father’s wine and spills it all over the table. The child starts laughing as the wine is everywhere and creating a mess. The father fuming with anger raises his hand with the intent of punishing the act when the suddenly child recoils in fear and utters the words “I’m sorry”. The father lowers his hand. The child continues to smile while cleaning up.
On the other side of the world. A man in a suit is late for a million dollar appointment and begins pushing through the crowd of a busy shopping centre. He knocks over an old lady and she falls to the ground spilling her shopping everywhere. “I’m sorry” he utters but doesn’t even stop to help her, nor does he even look back to see what happened.
Members of the press begin to get restless as they await for a young black sporting hero to enter the room to answer their questions. Eventually Tiger Woods emerges from behind the curtains and takes his place at the podium to speak. He looks visibly shaken by his experiences over the last few months and begins his speech addressing friends, family, associates and last but not least, his fans. To each one of these groups of people he utters the words “I’m sorry”.
Three different scenarios with no other commonality other than someone apologising but What does it actually mean to apologise to someone? The conventional definition of the word sorry is generally to express regret over an action taken by oneself that has caused some sort of distress for another person. Which is fine if we actually have caused the distress, but more often than not the term sorry is just thrown about without seriously considering what we are apologising for.
In the first scenario do you think the child is saying sorry because they feel regret over spilling the wine, or just as a knee jerk reaction to calm the father down so he wont hit them? What about the second scenario. Does it seem like the man in the suit was genuinely concerned about the old lady that he knocked over? And last but not least Mr Tiger Woods apologising over his antics of infidelity over the past few months. Do you think he means it?
Tiger’s case is an interesting one. Personally I don’t know anything about him other than he’s black and is quite good at hitting a little white ball over long distances, but over the past few months the whole world has learnt more about him and unfortunately as part of that learning was uncovering a lot of his mistakes. The Tiger Woods scandal blew up in the public eye in November 2009 but it’s now February and it’s taken him a long time to issue a public apology. Some may argue that he took too long and others argue at least he had the guts to do it. I’m of the opinion that he should have done it sooner because when you live in the public eye you need to be able to handle the responsibility that comes with it. But having said that, I can understand why he took so long to do it and I honestly believe that he is sorry for all the trouble that he caused.
But it’s not just about being sorry is it? It’s about taking responsibility for your actions and fixing the situation. Making the wrongs right again. That’s he real power of an apology.
One of my heroes Donald Trump offered Tiger some interesting advice. He basically said that Tiger should get divorced, be a playboy and go back to what he does best - playing golf. While I don’t agree with the first part of Mr Trump’s advice, he does raise a good point about going back to playing golf. This is what made the world fall in love with Tiger in the first place. Playing golf was what attracted those corporate sponsorship deals that made him quite wealthy. Playing golf laid the groundwork for him to start his own education foundation to help others. Golf is Tiger’s thing, so if he is serious about making amends with his family and the rest of the world he should start there.
When you think about it. Society in general is quite odd. We spend a massive amount of time and money building up ordinary people into superstars and then when they fall because they were acting like ordinary people, we are quick to tear them down. Then if they apologise and MEAN it, then we are more than happy to build them up again. And so the cycle continues…
So this week I challenge you to PAY ATTENTION to the times when you say “I’m Sorry”. Did something you do actually cause a problem to someone else? Take responsibility for your actions and fix it. But don’t just say sorry for the sake of saying sorry. You’re not doing anyone any favours because one day a time will come when you truly need to say sorry and you won’t have a clue on how to do it.
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
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Category:
Lead, Tiger Woods, scandal, sorry, Donald Trump, Golf, I’m Sorry
(1) Comments •
First of all I want to say that dog picture in this post is really very cute.I like your perspectives about Sorry and interesting to read those three different scenarios..Yes ‘Sorry’ is now a common term.I also believe that to say sorry is all about taking responsibility and solving problems.
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