In the bank of words, apologies are the gold standard. They heal rifts carved by a thousand sentences and silences, and they often create rifts of their own, if given at the wrong time.
Many save their apologies, hoarding it in piles stuck under their tongues — like a dragon, lounging on its wealth of treasure. But dragons would never survive in the 21st century. For wealth, at least right now, must circulate (or so common sense tells us).
And it is on that assumption that I trade apologies, choosing to toss a coin into the hat of the random passerby whom I almost ran into, and the random passerby whom I might have run into had I not noticed him, and the random passerby for whom it once had appeared that I may have had the possibility to run into.
I’m quite liberal with my trading, you see.
Because of this, there are few people I know that don’t hold an apology from the Rose Mint. I have to imagine this is the exception — not the rule. Partly because I observe other people and the way they act, and while most are kind and decent, many also don’t consider minor inconveniences “worthy” of an apology.¹ Partly because of other people’s advice — or, more accurately, criticism.
Notably, they find my haphazard use of apology reckless and risky and — to some small extent — shortsighted. They claim that my generosity strains the value of my word — that by leaving a wake of apologies behind me I am somehow degrading the value of the words I’m sorry.²
¹ Telling, I think, that we use the word ‘worth’ to refer to apologies. As if apologies are a deity we pray towards, hoping that they will forgive us our trespasses. Ironic, because apologies are all about forgiveness in the first place.
² As well as “I apologize,” and other synonyms.
It’s basic supply and demand, they say. Inflate the supply, and demand plummets.
Ignoring the fact that we are treating a complex economic phenomena — one which has whole careers dedicated to it — as a basic rhetorical metaphor, I think this is bullshit. Although, not in the way you may expect.
Rarity and “strength” are certainly tied together when it comes to rhetoric — I would argue especially so in the written word. Phrases such as “bullshit,” jar us out of our standard thought process, forcing us to more carefully consider what was written. Can this apply to apologies?
Of course — it’s why “the rare apology” is such a widely used trope. When the norm is broken, we consider what has changed — what about now is special? This engagement could theoretically be the difference between a success and a failure when it comes to forgiveness.
So rhetorically, these arguments about the frequent apology have merit, but I think there is a fatal flaw to this logic — common experience. I commented earlier about how the written word is the biggest beneficiary of “dictionary restrain”’ (as I call it), but this is because of scope.
When reading a piece of writing, you are immersed in a highly constructed vernacular space where the number of ‘to be’ verbs is carefully tracked and adverbs are trimmed as hedges in a garden. Despite this, some words still are processed as so ‘commonplace’ that they are practically ignored when read by a fluent speaker. I call these invisible words — these are the words that disappear into the page no matter how seemingly awkward their ubiquity is.
Take, for example, the word “said.” When writing dialogue, the word “said” is unavoidable — it is the basis of nearly every dialogue tag known to man and you end up just throwing it in prose to keep the pace going. Because of this, however, you almost never pay attention to it. Even when a page uses the word six or seven times in the exact same context, it’s overlooked. Its ubiquity allows it to hide on the page, and this is invaluable for pacing.
This becomes painfully obvious whenever invisible words are removed. When, for example, an assignment pushes students to use more specific, rarer alternatives to “said,” suddenly the pace slows down to a crawl. The page becomes cluttered.
Up to this point, I have been discussing this impact of rarity in the medium of the written word because it is the most controlled there. In the spoken word, it is much more rampant — a truly good speaker can explain the most complex topics in fascinating ways, using words that really enter in one ear and leave before making more than a basic impression.
The diction of apology is relatively narrow.³ So even in a world where everyone uses these words very, very sparingly, every single English speaker will likely hear these few expressions countless times in their lifetime (I have, and I’m fewer than two decades old). This means that apologies, while emotionally complex, are invisible words in speech. It is an expected expression, yes. It is an important expression, yes. But it is still invisible — when we hear it, the use of the word or phrase isn’t what matters.
³At least in English, although (from my minimal knowledge) I suspect it extends to other tongues as well.
What matters is context — the moment you chose to apologize, how you approach it, and the way you hold yourself while you do it. What matters is the tone of voice and struggle of admitting yourself as wrong.
What matters is everything but the words.
An apology is everything but the words.
So when I mutter “sorry” to the guy who needs to change his stride to pass me, I’m not proving my apology so worthless that I will drop it for any minor inconvenience. I’m not devaluing the next time I truly ask forgiveness, blemishing my gold coins into pennies. I’m offering a courtesy — the smallest courtesy maybe, but still a courtesy; a courtesy that really has nothing to do with the words that leave my lips. It’s about the mere fact that I’m willing to offer an apology for the smallest wrong — it’s an olive branch to be kind, to be caring and to be considerate.
And I won’t apologize for that.
Elliott Rose is a physics/math major pursuing a creative writing minor. He’s from State College, PA, and a part of the Creative Writing Club at University Park. Elliot says, “I’ve only really been writing since high school, but I love writing stories and poems and getting any cool idea I have down onto paper.”