For want of a word, a world is lost

The site of an accident at Ghenh Bridge, Dong Nai Province on February 6, when a train ploughed into six cars, killing two and injuring 24 others. Two taxi drivers arguing over who should give way first led to the shocking accident.

Sorry.

As children, we are taught to say this every time we make a mistake, and often the “mistakes” were something that were understood as such by adults, while we were just having fun or doing something “cool.”

We said sorry often, even when we thought we were not in the wrong, because it was easier than having to argue or explain things. We understood, perhaps instinctively, that it was easier to say sorry and move on, and that we were none the worse for having apologized.

However, this lesson seems lost on us as we become adults. However wrong we are, the word seems to get stuck in our throat. It is as though we lose something precious when we say we are sorry. What do we lose? We lose face? We lose our self-esteem? We lose others’ respect when we admit we are wrong?

The absence of a timely apology turns farce into tragedy. Trivial disputes end in death, even. Two taxi drivers arguing over who should give way first led to the shocking accident during this Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, when a train ploughed into six cars, killing two and injuring 24 others.

Someone remarked: “If only one of the drivers had said sorry, they then could have settled the dispute before the train came...”

We can also look at how the history of the world would have been different if people had said sorry.

When late US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote “In Retrospect,” admitting in effect that the Vietnam War was a mistake, he took great pains to stress he was not saying sorry. Unlike him and other war mongers, many American individuals, especially veterans of the war, have said sorry, in as many words, and through myriad humanitarian gestures. It enabled them to find closure, to move on.

The refusal to say sorry does more damage than allowing wounds to fester. It makes more mistakes, more lies, and worse atrocities possible, as the world is seeing today. It makes it possible to move from Agent Orange to Depleted Uranium. It makes it possible to move from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the sheer madness of “bunker busters.”

Do we really lose face, self-respect and more when we say sorry?

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd earned the admiration of the world when he apologized to the Aborigines and the Stolen Generation for the terrible suffering they were subjected to, taking the first step toward healing unbearably painful wounds.

The proverb goes: “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

We can make that divinity possible by the simple act of saying sorry and meaning it.

Posted in: Experimental Society