“An apology can be a wonderful thing so long as it is infrequent and from the heart. However, beware of the person who justifies bad behavior with apologies. For them it is a means to an end, and quite often at your expense.”—Gary Hopkins
Saying we’re sorry is a good habit to cultivate, for sure. Because it implies we take responsibility for our behavior and feel remorse or regret. We may also be expressing a genuine feeling of empathy for another’s pain. However, it’s often the case that we say sorry, with no real intention to act differently in the future. Saying sorry becomes a shabby ploy to kick the can down the corridor. We can also say we are sorry about another’s pain, with utter insincerity—like the cashier wishing us a good day with dead eyes and a fake smile.
Caught in the throes of our addiction, saying sorry was at best a device to manipulate others into our own needy agenda. And we were generally way too self-centered to spare one dime of empathy for another’s difficulties. If we did feel sorry, we made sure to stuff that threat of other-centeredness into the deeper recesses of our reluctant hearts.
When we moved into recovery we learned to back up our sorries with heart and with action. We made a concerted effort to track down those we had wronged and made amends, as best we could. Such efforts were often mighty tough in the doing of them, but a huge relief after the fact. Which is why it was recommended in the first place. However, many of those we’d wronged were, perhaps rightfully, suspicious that the leopard could really have changed his spots. Could this just be a cunning paint job—to mask the next duplicity? In our resolve to be strong in our recovery, we saw that a change in actual behavior was what was really going to make the difference.
Let’s reflect for a minute now, on an amend that we may not have backed up with a change in behavior. Is there something we can initiate on behalf of this amend that will put some real beef between the buns? We may get no further today than to trigger the first impulse toward corrective action—but hey, that’s already a whole lot more than we had before…
Speaking of leopards, let’s keep it simple today and just exercise our talons. Our hands have a massive—massive—neural connection to our brains, so exercising our hands is always beneficial.
Stand or sit comfortably. Rest your bent elbows on either side of your torso, touching just below the ribs. Hands facing down. Open and close your hands 20 times. Rotate your hands at the wrists 10 times in each direction. Move your hands up and down 20 times. You’ll be bringing healing juices into your wrist and fingers joints, which will help with mobility and pain-relief. Good, you’re done and dusted for the day!
I feel ready to imbue my amends with a healthy dose of action!