In everyday life, one can avoid being superficial to understand the feelings of others, to enter their world, to live together in peace with ours and others’ fragility. Sometimes, a spouse makes a big deal of even the smallest shortcomings, because he or she needs attention. To apologize when we realize that we have made a mistake is simple; it’s hard to do it when we feel innocent.
Yet often, it is precisely this apology that is the only way to start over, because love defies all logic. Sometimes, this means asking for forgiveness not for that spoken word or that action that has unintentionally offended the other, but for the superficiality and fragility that characterizes us all.
When we ask for forgiveness, we go to another level of relationship that is more than superficial. It goes deeper and requires courage. Yes, it could be humiliating at times, but it is liberating. It also raises our relationship not only to what is human but also to that which touches the divine.
True enough, new things happen only through forgiveness, giving or receiving. We transform our own eyes by having eyes of mercy which know how to look with compassion at the inevitable wounds that each of us carries within.
To apologize, therefore, is not to humiliate oneself, it is not renouncing our reasonability, but going beyond the facts that have occurred, reaching out to lift up those who are suffering because of reasons that are illogical and unknown to us.
Let us not imprison ourselves by looking at the miseries of life but be guided by mercy and tenderness.
