The Power of an Apology

     Last week on Friday, our class had lab exercises all morning.  I partnered with a person who sometimes rubs me the wrong way with their brusque manner.  Long story short, it wasn't too long before I felt that I was getting my intelligence insulted, that I was being rushed, that I was being viewed as incompetent, and it got me angry.  I let my anger show.  Then, I regretted it.  But no matter how nice I tried to be the rest of lab, I could feel the other person had withdrawn behind a wall, and there was nothing I could do to make the tension go away.
     Well, almost nothing.  It occurred to me during lunch that regardless of how I felt from my interactions with this person, the way I responded was negative and unhelpful.  And I can always apologize for my actions.  And furthermore, I can always forgive others for theirs.  So I resolved to forgive the perceived slight and I apologized to that person when we returned to class.  And I felt a LOT better.  The tension between us melted, and the weight of the negativity that I had been carrying around in my heart vanished.  In its place grew a sense of well-being and equanimity.
     Now this positive sense was not to last long, as an interaction with another classmate shortly thereafter put me once again in a foul mood.  I don't think I reacted angrily in person (as I did that morning), but I sure gave them a big piece of my mind in my imagination.  And inside, the outcome was just as destructive: my equanimity had left me and the ball of tension was back.
     I don't know whether karma has a metaphysical aspect or not, but within an hour something uncanny happened: the second person apologized to me.  And I felt a lot better.  And it made me think that maybe that's how I affected the person from that morning.  And it really drove the point home that apologies are powerful.  It made me think of a day at Tassajara...
     That morning, my friend said something really bitchy to me.  And it really hit me hard; my emotions were really raw almost all summer.  My mind took me for a pretty bad trip... like REALLY bad, really fraught with negativity.  I tried talking to him about it later but it just made things even worse.  And I had to get to work for guest dinner.  But while I was going about my business, he came up to me and offered me a sincere apology, and all that negativity just went *woosh* ... gone, gone, gone really far away... It was like seeing a dark storm far away over the ocean, on the horizon.
     And all this makes me think of a quote I saw in a meme on facebook:

Forgive.  Not because the other deserves forgiveness,

but because you deserve peace.

     Well I think in general most all of us do deserve forgiveness, but I don't want to labor that point.  It's a good reminder that the action of forgiveness, the action of an apology, the harmonious dance between those two complimentary actions, really has the power to put out a furnace of emotion inside us and to let us move on to a calmer, happier state.  So give it a try next time you think of it.  It works for me!