My Canadian friends apologize for every little thing, seemingly non-stop. The famous Canadian “sorry” is a reality, but it isn’t only Canadians.
Here’s the problem with that: if you apologize for everything all the time, it psychologically and emotionally has the same effect on everyone who hears your apologies. It sends a loud message that your apologies mean nothing since you use them for every tiny little thing.
As a result, when you do mess up, your apology will be ignored. You will be the boy who cried wolf of apologies.
Just think about anything meaningful people say. Imagine you’re dating Someone, and this Someone and tells you, “A heavenly bliss appears in front of me when I merely think of you, with flutters in my stomach every time we’re about to meet.” Sounds romantic and beautiful, right?
Now imagine you’re also friends with Someone’s ex, and the ex tells you that your Someone would always say the Exact Same Phrase when they were dating. Now imagine this ex is also friends with Someone’s other ex, who also tells you that Someone used those very same words constantly when they were dating as well. You eventually learn that every time your Someone bumps into Someone Else in the grocery store, your Someone tells them the same exact words, again.
Suddenly, when your Someone tells you those words, it’s a lot less compelling, right?
The subtext of this argument is: you are going to mess-up. Even majority. It’s not a question of if but when. As a result, you need to have your apology cards all ready to use for when you do.
You may be thinking, “Well, I will vary the real-apologies from the less-important apologies by using stronger words. For minor things, I’ll say ‘sorry’ like a Good Canadian, but for bigger things, I’ll follow the full apology protocol you articulated in another chapter. Won’t that do it?”
No, for a reason I’ve argued in another chapter. The difference between doing something or not (0 and 1) is much greater than the difference between “how much” of something you actually do. There is a huge difference between apologizing and not apologizing; but once you are apologizing—even if just the word ‘sorry’—then it’s just a minor difference. So this doesn’t apply here.
The meta version of this argument is that, since words matter, you should say words only when you deeply mean them. When you really do fuck up, you will mean to apologize (at least, I hope you will.) But when you’re walking carefully and normally and toes just appear out of nowhere and you step on them—you didn’t know, you couldn’t have done anything differently, it’s not your fault—so don’t lessen the value of your apologies by apologizing then.
A good rule of thumb to follow is: when something goes wrong, and the cause of that something could reasonably be attributed to you, and with the information you had at the time, and not knowing the consequences in advance, you could not have known that you shouldn’t have made that decision. The third factor is important and applies to the toe-stepping example. Even if something did go wrong (you stepped on his toes), you were the cause (you did the stepping), he appeared out of nowhere and there was nothing you could have done differently. By apologizing in that context, you do nothing but scream to the world that your apologies are meaningless.
