On the subject of apologies

Sunday 11/9/25

People make so many excuses for themselves and they want you to make them, too--as in honor their excuses as legitimate reasons; reasons which cannot be overcome.

The drama people inject into their claims of what they say they cannot do is maximalist. Every mountain there ever was is piled on their back to hear them tell it. They don't have a second to so much as blink. Trust me, they seem to say, my stuff is different than everyone else's. No one has ever had it like they have it right now. Except...they live a really ordinary life. They work one job. They have a spouse. Nice house. Sleep plenty.

Sure, there have been hard things. A parent died. Then another. Life things. And life things which don't really change the regular life. The day to day life. Things that have become ancillary over time. Which sounds cold, but it's a lot different when the day to day life is blown up.

But yes, the hard year. The hard six months. To the person, though, who is not treated well by that person, or horribly, or worse, there is the knowledge that the behavior was no different eighteen months ago. Or five years ago. Or ten. And yet...the excuses--sorry, the "reasons"--were always there, always expressed in dramatic, maximalist terms.

And an ever present, overriding cloud of...

IT CAN'T BE HELPED!

But the truth is, it can always be helped, if you want it to be helped. And that's really what it comes down to. If you want to you will, if you don't you won't.

And you know what you aren't? The exception to that rule, because there isn't one.

Those goalposts are in perpetual movement as well, because, of course, the goalposts--that is, the subject/the issue--aren't the issue. They very rarely are. Every single person, just about, believes their life is unique. Their problems are the biggest. They are the busiest.

It is the person, though, that is the issue. There's no "But, but, but, but..." about it, which is what they default to. The external has very little variance from life to life, as most people live their lives, in terms of what's in them, what they want, who they have. What they're ultimately going for.

In a world where there's less and less self-awareness--to the point that practically no one possesses it any longer; or is even capable of it--there's no reaching such a person, no discourse that one can have with them that would lead to them seeing any truth, let alone accepting that truth.

They might see a flash, a sliver of truth in the moment of your exchange with them, or they read your heartfelt letter, but the truth about the truth is that it causes people to tap out. What feels like pressure builds, and then the fail-safe kicks in, releasing them from the exercise.

That fail-safe takes myriad forms. They can say, "You're attacking me!" and make like they're the victim, which is very thematically similar to how they're living anyway. They can start spouting inane excuses that tend to become increasingly inane. They can storm off, hang up, get angry. Decide they don't want that person with their standards, their belief in accountability, in their lives any longer. Much easier to have people who really don't care one way or the other.

You know who has the easiest time being "chill"? People with no standards who don't give a damn. People who are just here as passive riders. With no depth, principles, respect for themselves, respect for others, respect for right and wrong, no concern for growth, connection.

And because that's most people, and because we--as in society and culture--adjust to take care of the most amount of people rather than the fewest--which is to say, we culturally and societally devolve in accordance with how most people are--we then make shortcomings and failings into virtues rather than looking in the mirror and then doing what one can to improve. You then have a society, a culture, a world, in which things are inverted. Good is bad, bad is good, etc.

Life as a series of bastardized, backwards paradigms.

People can also now get themselves to believe anything. You could hook them up to a lie detector and see that they honestly believe such and such a thing in their life is this all-incapacitating thing that negates them doing x, y, and z, regardless if any of those things take three seconds and an infinitesimal speck of decency and/or consideration.

Accountability is merely something people back load into an "after the fact" apology, which is just words, not an indication that they understand their actions and what those actions mean, let alone the kind if sincerity that marks all true contrition because it is the kind that is immediately and consistently put into practice and sustained such that it becomes the new regular way.

Almost all apologies are just timeouts. Sure, someone may feel bad briefly. The apology, at best, mostly says, "I hear you, other person." Because, all things being equal, they'd prefer not to hurt that person or be a source of their pain. But then whistle of life blows again, and that individual goes right back to what they were doing, or lapses back into doing it shortly thereafter.

If the behavior continues, the person wasn't really sorry. That was just something they said to you, and, more importantly--though they never seem to know this--something that they said for themselves. For selfish reasons. But you'd have to possess self-awareness to know that. And to then do something about that? Fat fucking chance.

You'd have to be able to admit unpleasant about yourself, you need humility, strength to face that in a very real way you suck as a person, and then make real effort to change those things. Why? For one other person? Because it's not like anyone else--chance are--in that person's life is thinking about morality or standards or has standards when it comes to morality. They're probably a different version of whomever the goalpost moving/self-professed maximally taxed/burdened person is.

Apologies aren't about intention. They're not about conciliation. They're not a sop. They're not about acknowledging what that person has done to another. Sure, some of that can be in there. But they're ultimately about follow through, if the apology is sincere and legitimate.

Legitimate apologies--as I've defined a legitimate apology here--are virtually nonexistent now when it comes to long-established patterns of behavior, and long need not even be that long, necessarily, if you understand me.

If you actually were that different, you'd know it. If what you were contending with was actually that different, you'd know it. The irony being that you'd also be far less likely to act like, and make the claims of, the kind of person I've described here.