Sorry

The word "sorry" in the family, the Pope rightly says, is one of the key words. It is a word that requires training, it is not spontaneous. If you have to say thank you it seems easier to understand: you say it for something beautiful (even if small) that was done for you. You are happy, and you say thank you. Thank you reminds you not to take good things for granted, it reminds you that there are no owed things. Apologizing is harder: we apologize because we have done something wrong or at least not sensitive to someone. And to achieve this we need to go through quite a few steps: admitting to ourselves that there has been a mistake on our part (first conflict with our pride), having the strength to admit it in front of others (at least in front of to our "victim", second conflict) and perhaps even be willing to suffer the backfire of the offended party (and we have reached three). In short, sorry is a word that really asks to be learned, because it must also be pronounced in a certain way and cannot be thrown at you in anger, otherwise it will have the opposite effect! Sometimes it can be so difficult to do all these steps while growing up, that it takes a lot of calm on the part of dad and mom to make us follow this path, and every now and then the children have to admit: I can't do it.


Eva & Ale
NP June / July 2023