It’s good practice to apologize. Sometimes, even when you weren’t trying to be hurtful, you were just thoughtless.
I’m sorry.
It’s a good practice. But it’s hard to apologize. Or, rather, it’s hard to apologize and mean it.
The news is full of a lot of apologies, followed by, “I’m going to rehab because I realize my actions were the result of the addiction (and pick your addiction, from drugs to sex) that was ruling my life.”
Which may be true, but doesn’t make the wronged person feel any better. Oh, okay, you beat her up, but you were just drunk, okay, that explains everything. There’s no contrition ritual to make it right for the wronged person.
But lately, there’s another layer. It makes it impossible to make it right. Maybe you’ve heard of it. The cancel culture. It says that you should not do anything wrong in the first place, because you should have known. And if you do something wrong, you get canceled.
When is an apology enough? And what can people do to fix what they’ve done wrong?
We talk Cancel Culture on today’s Keep it Juicy! podcast.
