It is not what you have done, nor what has been done to you, that is useful as your focus, it is the quality of your next movement that actually changes things. The essential words here are first ‘quality’ and secondly ‘movement’. This Ageless Wisdom makes clear that if the quality of movement, expression by words or actions, is not clear and true, then no amount of words or gestures of apology will address what occurred, and ‘I’m sorry’ will be a lie. If this quality (energy) is not addressed, then judgement will reign supreme, leaving a receiver who has judged the action as wrong, languishing in resentment, hurt or blame.
This tenet for living I return to often, in the therapy room, and across my life.
Sorry.
It’s said and heard all too often without the foundation of truth in action as a response. We readily offer it, receive it and sometimes even demand it from others, yet how many times have we said sorry and then done the very same thing again? Or said sorry and done the right thing to prove we are sorry, but done it in resentment rather than love? I’m not the first to say that words matching actions is a basic 101 of human behavioural integrity, from child rearing, to business and across all relationships, but it is crucial that our words and actions are in alignment with what is true for them to effect any true change.
Before we forgive someone, we have judged them.
It begins with judgement, we have judged the other person for doing something wrong, and we hold that position, with the right to assess another’s behaviour until they apologise. Or in the case of ourselves, that judgement can be cemented in the background for years, never releasing ourselves from our internal judge, fuelling that inner narrative that we are not a good person, not good enough, an imposter.
Forgiveness is our signalling that we can release that person from judgement, but it never addresses the fact we judged in the first place, so doesn’t release us from having judged. Sorry arises out of the same dynamic. I have done something you have judged as wrong, I acknowledge that judgement, and sorry is me accepting that verdict.
But why does expressing an apology, or receiving that long awaited ‘I’m sorry’ sometimes feel like it changed nothing, felt so empty?
In this case the problem is often that the initial judgement of the person is recorded metaphorically on a ledger, sins that accumulate, used as a reminder of how we stuffed up previously with each subsequent misdemeanour. This reveals that the insidiousness of judgement unacknowledged behind a seemingly benevolent forgiveness, forgive and forget, is not so readily forgotten after all.
What’s more insidious is the ledger of sins we hold ourselves to ransom for.
There are instances where we judge ourselves for misdeeds, projecting onto others that they consider us an idiot, perhaps bad at our job, an insufficient partner or a weak member of society, holding the assumption that they judge us as such, when they may not have done so at all.
We perpetuate the narrative internally, we anticipate it before it has even happened, justifying why we can’t step into life, work, family and relationships in full. Fuelled by guilt and shame, we push around a boulder for eternity like Sisyphus, only it is we who do the condemning. Even finding forgiveness for ourselves doesn’t seem to cut it.
What actually changes things is what happens next, responsibility for what happened is taken in the commitment to move truth in the quality of our next movement.
This could be in the way we show up in the next interaction, how we speak, how we treat the person before us.
There’s no problem with apologising so long as it is precipitated by a shift in the quality, or energy in which move.
Step forward into the next moment to say I’m sorry because you feel you have to, or it’s the right thing to do, without genuinely being in the movement of change to the way we did the hurtful act, and we only reconfirm nothing has changed, and the apology is worse than empty, it cements things like hut, resentment, guilt and shame. We remain in the sorry cycle, saying it, thinking we mean it, and saying it again.
Or we withhold it and wait for the other person to say it, or we offer it in expectation the other person will reciprocate, needing it as justification for releasing them from our judgement. But the cycle seems never to complete at times, because sorry isn’t designed to complete anything, it is designed to acknowledge a judgment was made, a wrong was committed, it doesn’t speak of your next movement to address it.
None of this is to say don’t apologise, but understanding its relationship to judgment will release us from the impact of holding someone in judgment. Bringing our focus to the quality in which we express next, assures us that what we recognise as not okay does not happen again, because that embodied change of expression/movement does more than any apology, signalling to the other person, I’m sincere about change.
One of the great corrupters of any relationship is the focus on what the other person does, or has done, rather than who they are, their quality, their essence.
We too readily hold each other to ransom for past misdeeds or actions, we hold them in our memory, on a ledger of sins, that whilst they’ve apologised we continue to keep a note of what occurred. Memories accumulate, and the residue of our partner’s behaviours builds up in us, fuelling disproportional reaction to their consequent trip ups. Even if they have genuinely changed, moved differently, we can hold resentment about the past, letting it shape how we see them.
We can tell ourselves we are being careful, realistic, self-protective, but it also gives us just cause to maintain our moral high ground, the proof that we were the one wronged. When we hold someone to what they did, we can no longer see them for who they are, and we lose sight of who is actually in front of us. It is the clearing of judgment in ourselves that clears the slate, not the other’s apology alone. Then we are clear to read their actions and the quality behind them, from clarity rather than clouded by judgment.
Sorry and forgiveness can veil holding a person (or ourselves) in condemnation long after an act occurred.
The past misdemeanour is kept alive, made reference to, reminded of, and the original judgment lives on ceaselessly.
Shifting our attention to the quality of our next movement of expression, whether we are the perpetrator or the receiver, releases us both from the condemnation of eternally carrying that ill act and its impact forward. Releasing us all from the poison of judgment, blame, shame and guilt.
Sara Williams writes with the understanding that knowledge is not owned; when its source is Ageless Wisdom, it is accessible to and known by all. These reflections are drawn from therapeutic work, themes that arise across many client sessions and life in general. All identifying details are removed, and confidentiality is always protected.
Photo subject credit: The Magnificent Pulse Clothing
