{"id":908,"date":"2015-06-16T00:22:23","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T00:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/?p=908"},"modified":"2015-12-21T23:57:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T23:57:40","slug":"sorry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/sorry\/","title":{"rendered":"“Sorry”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"speaker<\/a>There is nothing I admire more in people than when they take responsibility for their words and actions.\u00a0 We all say and do things that are less than our best but we show our character when we take responsibility for what we do and say.<\/p>\n

When I was 19, I was living in Alaska; I had read many of Jack London\u2019s novels so\u00a0I anticipated outdoor experiences where I would discover my true self through minimalist living and tests of physical endurance: a girl meets nature.\u00a0 What I got instead was learning about the nature of myself.<\/p>\n

One of those experiences came after church volleyball.\u00a0 I am not skilled in any sport that involves a ball.\u00a0 Typically, I am welcomed by my fellow players due to my humor.\u00a0 I am pretty funny.\u00a0 That day, I was on a roll, cracking jokes mostly about my own skills; self-deprecating humor is usually safe.\u00a0 I made one comment concerning volleyball skills wasn\u2019t about me, but about another young woman.\u00a0 It landed not with a thud but with laughter.\u00a0 Later, as I was leaving with a group of guys attending me (this was Alaska, after all, so a young lady was always accompanied),\u00a0I asked out loud, \u201cI wonder if what I said could have been hurtful?\u201d I was strongly assured I was too sweet, everyone knows I am so kind, I was too awesome to misspeak\u2026 all words I loved to hear!\u00a0 One guy, however,\u200bsaid, \u201cpossibly.\u200b\u201d\u00a0 The possibility was worth investigating.<\/p>\n

So, I went back in and approached the young woman who had been the brunt of my harmless, not-possibly-offensive words. \u201cWhat I just said, I think may have been hurtful. I am sorry.\u201d \u00a0Today, 20 years later I don\u2019t remember what I had said, but I do still remember the look in her eyes.\u00a0 As I spoke I could see how she responded to my words that what I had said had made her question my intent – it had hurt.\u00a0 And though she said, \u201cOh, it was nothing,\u201d and she laughed,\u200bI learned something that day.\u00a0 It had not been my intention to hurt, yet I had hurt her feelings, even though 98% of the people there saw nothing\u00a0hurtful in what was said.\u00a0 That experience has stood out to me as a pivotal moment.\u00a0 I am charming, it\u2019s true.\u00a0 With that charm, I could get away with saying a lot of things and people will take it, even laugh.\u00a0 But I have to remember, words impact people in often unintended ways.\u200b<\/p>\n

I admire the ability to say sorry because I don\u2019t think it’s a skill that comes naturally to us humans.\u00a0 I think we have mastered saying sorry in a way that is laden with \u201cwhy are you making me do this?\u201d We are accomplished at the \u201csorry\u201d with rolled eyes of our teen years.\u00a0 We are excellent at the \u201csorry\u201d that comes with expectation that the receiver will in turn validate us. We have refined our ability to say,\u200b\u00a0\u201cI am sorry you are so hurt,\u201d which is not a sorry at all.\u00a0 All of these kinds of saying I am \u201csorry\u201d place blame on the other person and not on the one who did or said what they said. Or one of my favorites, \u201cI am sorry it\u2019s just that\u2026\u201d which comes off as saying \u201cI am sorry but you\u2026\u201d where saying I am sorry is a YOU statement about someone else.<\/p>\n

I am proud of my 19-year-old self that walked back in and apologized without conditions and then walked out.\u00a0 I later recommended a guy friend of mine ask out that young woman.\u00a0 They got married. I fell in love with the man that said \u201cpossibly,\u201d because he had the character to call me out, to tell me the truth, not just the pretty words I wanted to hear; the type of words we all want to hear.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t marry him, but I did marry someone with the same quality.\u00a0 My husband has many times been an accountability partner, aiding me to become my best self and me for him.\u00a0 We have said sorry to each other without “you should have\u2026” And we have swallowed the sorry\u2019s of blame.<\/p>\n

I admire the ability to take responsibility because I have worked so hard to develop that in myself, to say sorry and mean it.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to say sorry if there was a possibility of misunderstanding. I am pretty sure that Drama is really defined by \u201cI don\u2019t ever take responsibility for my words and actions,\u200bI want you to take that responsibility for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can we trust ourselves, the nature of who we are,\u200bif we are don\u2019t learn and grow from our past, including our past mistakes?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is nothing I admire more in people than when they take responsibility for their words and actions.\u00a0 We all say and do things that are less than our best but we show our character when we take responsibility for what we do and say. When I was 19, I was living in Alaska; I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7,241],"tags":[309,306,308,307,305],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-philosphy","category-speaking","tag-alaska","tag-humor","tag-hurtful","tag-possibly","tag-sorry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yourglamourconnection.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}