Last week, with the approach of the Jewish New Year, I began getting emails and seeing posts on Facebook from friends with wishes for a sweet New Year and sentiments regarding forgiveness. It is the posts of pleas for forgiveness, that have given me pause for thought as we celebrate these High Holy Days, ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
In the course of my journey, teaching peacemaking and conflict resolution to incarcerated men and women through Prison of Peace, we often discuss the topic of atonement in the form of apology. In fact, this is the cornerstone of all sincere efforts at resolving conflict, including those of extreme violence and grievous harm. In order to learn how to become effective mediators, my students, most of them serving life sentences in prison, must learn how to sincerely understand and convey their own accountability, before they can help others to do the same.
Over the years, in thinking about their own accountability, many of my students in prison have asked me how they, who have actually killed another, can apologize and ask for forgiveness from their victim survivors. This has forced me to explore these concepts from a rather unique perspective. First and foremost in my mind is the emotional safety of victims and the potential for re-victimization.
The answer I have reached in this regard is that sincere apologetic offerings and forgiveness do not go hand in hand. Despite prayers and verses to the contrary, in many of the world's religions, I don't view atonement as related to seeking forgiveness, but about making things right through reparation and reconciliation.
A sincere apology is an offering given to a person who has been hurt by another, to do with what they will and with absolutely no strings attached. It can only be done after the person making the offering has fully recognized their personal accountability for harm done, and is willing to acknowledge it, along with an expression of remorse for whatever pain or difficulty their actions caused.
When (if) we think of apologies in the course of our days, it is probably done in the context of repairing hurt feelings, returning or replacing things damaged, lost or even stolen, essentially, "making things right". In many of the situations I am addressing with my students, because grievous harm has been done, people are gone and/or lives are forever altered, there exists no possibility of making things right. In these situations, all that exists is the potential of learning, through recognition of responsibility and taking accountability, whether there is anything that can be done in service of the victim and being willing to do whatever that may be. This is the possibility, the promise, in apology.
We are so conditioned to crafting apologies that include requests for forgiveness that we are unaware of the subtleties of what we are doing. In order for the promise of apology to exist, an offering of apology can have no connection to a request for forgiveness. When I teach about apology, the first thing I teach is to remove the words "please accept my apology" or "please forgive me". Both of these require something of the receiver, done on behalf of the person offering the apology, rather than creating a pure offering for the purpose of moving toward making a situation as right as possible. This often undermines the expression of apology.
Next time you feel that an apology may be in order, large or small, if you want to try doing it differently, the following steps may be of use in crafting your apology:
1) A statement of remorse (ex. I am so very sorry for);
2) A statement of accountability for your own behavior (ex. taking the car without checking with you to see if you needed it first);
3) A statement of recognition of the harm caused (ex. because that left you stranded and you were unable to keep your promise to your friend to take her to her doctor's appointment); and
4) A statement that you will not repeat the same behavior again (ex. next time I need the car, I will ask you if you have any commitments before I take it).
This kind of an apology lets people know that we actually understand exactly what we did that caused them difficulty, the impact of what we did and that, because we know that, they can count on the fact that it won't happen again. When we behave in ways that allow others to feel seen, heard, valued and safe, we are doing what we can to make things "as right as possible" and can move on toward making tomorrow better than yesterday. That is Atonement.