Quid Pro Quo
Posted on | December 29, 2009 | No Comments
We make mistakes. We’re human. It’s what we do. We’re fallible and sometimes, we screw up. We do the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. It doesn’t make us bad people. It simply makes us human.
We also apologize for our mistakes, especially if those mistakes hurt or offended someone. This is also a part of being human. We recognize our folly and ask others to understand that we’re sorry.
I seem to make a lot of mistakes, especially when it comes to my family. Sometimes I feel like every time I turn around, I’ve done something else wrong. So I have a lot of practice apologizing. Recently, I apologized to someone – Person X. I was wrong. I’m willing to admit that and I asked for forgiveness.
Person X accepted my apology, but said the acceptance came with a few conditions.
And for reasons I’m still trying to understand, that made me angry. I’m not even sure I have the right to be angry about it, since I was in the wrong in the first place. But I am angry.
It’s hard to apologize, to ask for forgiveness. Doing so requires us to tap into our deepest reserves of humility and to open ourselves up to vulnerability. We have to face our flaws head on and acknowledge exactly why we’re apologizing in the first place. We have to accept the possibility that we might not receive forgiveness, at least at first.
But to have Person X attach conditions to the acceptance of the apology? Well, it felt like a slap in the face to me. He/she wasn’t rejecting my apology – that might have been easier to deal with. No, it was as if he/she was saying “okay, I accept your apology, but since you did that, I only accept if you do this first.” It was a quid pro quo acceptance of my apology, which made the whole thing feel insincere.
I’ve been on the receiving end of an apology, so I know it’s much hard to forgive than to ask for forgiveness. And it’s entirely possible that I’m too close to the situation, too sensitive to the issue to really see clearly. Still, I believe I made a genuine and heartfelt apology, humbling myself before another person. And instead of accepting that apology with grace, Person X decided to take the opportunity to make forgiveness contingent on him/her receiving something in return.
I might be completely wrong (and feel free to tell me that I am). But this whole situation has left me with a bad taste in my mouth and wondering if there was any point in apologizing at all.
Comments
Leave a Reply