Mistakes and apologies

I hate being wrong. I have always hated being wrong since I was a child, and if I said something incorrectly, my older sibling would tease the living hell out of me. It wasn’t just joking banter, my mistakes were constantly being brought up and paraded in front of guests, my parents, friends. This resulted in me despising being wrong to the point that I would become stubborn even when I knew I was wrong, desperately trying to find a way to be correct.

Through my childhood and teenage years, I unconsciously went about with this mentality. Being wrong was shameful, and so I would try my darnedest to not be caught being wrong, which usually meant not speaking up until I was more than sure I was correct, or refusing to admit defeat.

During my school years, I met many friends that showed an abundance of different reactions to being wrong. Some merely accepted it and carried on, others apologized, some were rude or angry when called out, and many were stubborn when presented with the facts. It was only through observing those who were more stubborn than I, that finally made me realize how silly I must have looked. To admit you are wrong and own up to your mistakes is infinitely harder than arguing with your opponent until they admit defeat, but only because they ran out of stamina or tolerance for the argument.

When my mother punched me playfully in the back but struck my spine, it hurt and I told her so. She immediately hit back with “it was so light! I barely used any force” and I continued to say, you hit a bone, and it hurt. She kept repeating that she didn’t use any force and that there was no way it would have hurt. I was a bit baffled at this. I told her it hurt, and all she had to do was apologize. She said I had lectured her so much that an apology no longer mattered. And this is exactly the mindset I grew up with. If I didn’t intend to hurt you, I shouldn’t need to apologize. But there is something so egregiously wrong with that. You don’t get to decide for someone what hurts them and what doesn’t. You don’t get to rewrite their feelings. I don’t blame my mom for this, it was her upbringing and therefore it became mine. But now that it is something I’ve realized, if I don't break the cycle, then I will be the one who suffers.

Apologizing doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t even necessarily mean you’re wrong, or a bad person. It just means you can admit that you did something that affected someone else, and apologizing means you didn’t mean to hurt them, but you did, and you are sorry.