Sorry for being sorry and other vices
I recently took it upon myself to attempt to count each time I said sorry in the space of a day. The same day over breakfast, I had read a tweetstorm about how a female CEO had been told off in a patronising way by her male counterpart for apologising too often, how it had infuriated her, but also how it made her stop and look at herself and question whether her outrage was legitimate or not. In a way, I know how she feels - being told to ‘calm down’ or ‘stop fretting’ by anybody, let alone a man doing almost the exact same job as you gets to me in the worst way. But saying ‘sorry’? I gave it some thinking and realised that I myself was guilty of this, constantly being made aware of it by my friends and family. I wondered if whether me apologising for things that I didn’t need to be sorry for was something out of habit, if I was genuinely sorry or whatever it may be. My friend and I joked about our constant taglines of ‘but only if you can!’, ‘no worries if not’ at the sign-off of messages, or asking for something genuinely because we needed it and tagging on an apology for asking at the end. Why was I doing this? I began to cringe at my WhatsApp conversations and even ogle at past work emails in which I would ask a client who was two weeks overdue to pay me, and actually apologise at the end of the email for inconveniencing him! Luckily this email was one of its kind and at the start of my novice days as a freelancer, and I learned quickly that this kind of communication and behaviour was unacceptable; both for the laziness of my client who paid me well past the deadline, but also for my need to apologise for something I really needed at the time; something that was rightfully mine in a transaction of business for payment.
In one day, I broke my apologising habit down to about twenty occurrences - which, in my mind, was pretty low, considering the colloquialisms of ‘sorry’, ‘excuse me’ for pushing past somebody in the shop, or reaching over the counter to get your takeaway coffee. But I noticed that it seemed to be a kind of filler word. I didn’t even mean it half the time - why was I apologising for squeezing past somebody who was wrongly blocking the pavement or door? Is this a female thing? Are we programmed to apologise for not just our behaviour, but for the most mundane of human actions too? I was enthralled by this idea, but also now highly aware of my use of the word. I consciously tried to cut down its usage, but only made me realise more how ridiculously lenient I had been with it before. It was almost comical.
Why do we apologise for things that aren’t in our control, or our fault? Looking back at Email-Gate I wanted to reach into my laptop screen and shake and harangue my former self, naive and lenient as I was. I understand now that I also probably didn’t want to make a fuss, but that sometimes you have to take the no-nonsense approach, especially when your livelihood is involved, to getting what you rightfully deserve. Women are stereotyped as not wanting to make a fuss because if we do, we are labelled as bossy or demanding, we just want to be liked. Or are we just picking apart the way we communicate with one another?
Apologising for things that we rightfully deserve or expect holds us back from success, from moving on with our lives. We need to be more aware of why we say sorry for things that we just don’t need to be, to regain the meaning and strength of the word itself. This can be said for relationships too - I try to ignore the ‘biological explanation’ of women being overly-emotional in relationships and thus apologising for what we want as a form of communication, but when you want something that is going to be good for both parties, why frame it in a conciliatory way? You don’t have to repent because you ask for something as banal as basic communication, or more complex as sexual wants, for example.
Our words should not feel like an imposition, but a contribution. Even writing this piece, I almost felt pangs of guilt that I was coming across too strong, too whiny - another apology. Apologising for things we have no control over weakens our sense of self, and makes others see less in you - if you care about that sort of thing. If we keep saying sorry so much our threshold for apologies will be so low that we’ll trip over it, and it’s high time we caught ourselves in the act of doing so and question ourselves as to whether what we are doing, asking or saying is really worthy of amendment. Take control of your words, guys and gals, and assert yourselves - be unapologetically un-sorry.