Repair by Genuineness

The words “I’m sorry” are thrown around everyday for different reasons. It is used for the most intense navigations of forgiveness, such as “I’m sorry, but I fell in love with someone else” to a simple “I’m sorry I lost your pencil in math class.” We use the term “I’m sorry” to hopefully repair or restore even the most drastic or unapologetic acts we make, even if we don’t mean it. “I’m sorry” will save us time and an extreme amount of guilt.

 

That, of course, is precisely why sincere apology is so welcoming: Once it has been offered, an acknowledgement of wrongdoing has been given, and neither the victim nor any other agents of justice need spend time rehearsing the harms that have been done or trying to pry a confession of the wrongdoer. The repair of the victim, to the relationship between victim and wrongdoer, and to the fabric of the society has begun (97).

 

Take our criminal justice system as an example of how not getting a sincere apology will prevent repair. Spelman argues that “the law focuses on those harms only to the extent necessary to establish the guilt of the offender and the appropriate level of punishment to be meted out” (55). A rape victim will be permanently mentally scarred because the criminal will be thrown into jail and the victim will never have to talk to the criminal ever again if they choose. I believe this is the biggest reason rape victims struggle to recover, because they know the rapist is not sorry. They do not care about how the victim feels or they would not have done it. Once the criminal is proven guilty, they are “unsalvageable or not worth of repair.” If they are not sentenced for life, this could affect the community again in the future because they will learn their actions were wrong – which is why they are in jail- but not why they were wrong.

 

There is a difference between genuinely using the term “I’m sorry” and just saying it to seem more polite. In the context of the previously stated quote from Spelman, she is referring to an apology where someone really wants to make sure they repair the relationship- that is why it “is so welcoming.” I have had many experiences in my life where someone used the term “I’m sorry” but did not really mean it, including myself. For example, I was a hostess at a restaurant in my hometown from freshman to junior year. On Friday nights the dining room would get packed, and around 7-8:00 the line to wait would start get longer and longer. If someone would ask, “Can I have a table for six?” I would have to answer, “I’m sorry it is probably going to be a 30 minute wait.” Whether she answered “Okay that’s fine!” or “Oh, that’s too long,” I would feel the exact same emotion; neutral. I’m not actually sorry that you have to wait, because we are still getting business either way. In this case, there is no repairing the relationship between myself and the woman who wants a table because A) It is not my fault there is not a table available and B) I am not genuinely sorry.

 

To say sorry for something that is not even your fault is another example to how the term is extremely over used. Recently it has been my dream to become an OBGYN and bring new lives into the world. I could either make parents the happiest people on earth or the saddest, and they last term they would want to hear is “I’m sorry” because this would imply a miscarriage, or something has gone wrong with the pregnancy. Except as a doctor I should not be sorry because it is not my fault that this has happened. I understand we feel incredibly sorry and have sorrow for the expecting parents, but shouldn’t we rather say something along the lines of “I feel terrible that this has happened, but…”?
The victim may hear everyone in the world, besides the one person she actually wants to hear it from say “I’m so sorry for what happened” because of our criminal justice system. “I’m sorry” is not going to bring a baby’s life back, or get a party of six their table, so why do we use it?