Thank you versus I'm sorry: no need to apologize

I don't know if this is an American cultural thing, or a gendered communication thing or what, but I hear people say "I'm sorry ..." frequently and seemingly absentmindedly.   "Sorry I'm late to this meeting." "Sorry I stepped on your foot." "Sorry I can't seem to get my act together." "Sorry I didn't do my share of the work for the project."  Can you think of more examples to add to this list?

I want to encourage people to rethink/reword the "I'm sorry" sentiment into "Thank You" sentiments.  These are my reasons why...

1) The appropriate response to Thank you is "You're welcome". It is relationship affirming.  It means you are welcome to be as you are; I welcome your participation in our friendship. We give the gift of friendship to each other over and over.  Of course you are welcome.

What is the appropriate response to "I'm sorry"? "That's ok"? Do you find yourself saying "that's ok" when it really isn't ok? While there is some social benefit to expressing apology sincerely, it is so much better to avoid hurting each other, even accidentally, right?

2) "I'm sorry" is passive aggressive. I am acknowledging that I hurt your feelings, or took more than my fair share, or de-prioritized your needs over mine, or broke a promise. And if I do it over and over, I'm setting that as the norm for our relationship. Soon I won't even have to say I'm sorry about it.  Because I'm really not sorry.  You're letting me get away with it, and I'm happy to do less work, or have more stuff for myself.

3) "I'm sorry" lends itself to self-centered thinking. I'm thinking about my situation, blah blah blah, without thinking of the rest of the context--how I got here, how it is affecting others.

4) I swear sometimes people seem to spend more time coming up with their elaborate apology than it would have taken to do the work in the first place.  I don't want them to think of me as someone who needs their apology.  I'd rather have a relationship based on a common goal, sharing resources, abating confusion, than a person not feeling like she or he can take and ask and make mistakes and be confused in a safe place.

5) "I'm sorry" is problem-focused. "Thank you" is solution-focused.

To return to the examples from the beginning (all of which I have had the opportunity to utter in the past few weeks), here are suggestions for rethinking the apologies into expressions of gratitude:
 
"Sorry I'm late to this meeting." --> "Thank you for your patience...someone stopped me in the hallway on my way here."
"Sorry I stepped on your foot." --> "Thanks for tolerating/appreciating my clumsiness as we learn this dance.  Thanks for giving me another chance."
"Sorry I can't seem to get my act together."--> "My mind's been distracted by something, and I appreciate the way you keep us focused."
"Sorry I didn't do my share of the work for the project."-->"Thanks for explaining these complex concepts again--I think I'll be able to get these updates to you by Tuesday now."
"I'm sorry for eating the delicious plums." -->"Thanks for buying the delicious plums!" (Gotta love William Carlos Williams)

Rewording these sentiments into 'thank you's also reminds me of the thing I am doing for which I normally would be apologizing (is an excuse a synonym for apology?). Now I see it, state it, and perhaps can make better choices to prevent it from happening in the future.  Am I tired because I haven't been getting enough sleep? Do I not have my work done because I am avoiding it?  Am I avoiding it because I don't understand it? Because I don't have all the resources?  With stating these concerns as thank yous, I can start to ask for additional information, clarification or resources to help me do my stuff better.

I believe we really do want to help each other.  I try to say thank you several times a day, partly because I think it is satisfying for people to have the opportunity to say 'you're welcome.' They have something to offer that I appreciate, and I acknowledged it. It also helps me to focus my gratitude on the myriad blessings and supportive people in my life.  What we focus on expands.

We work in the dark

Enargia is a term I leaned while studying rhetoric, which I loosely translate as "bring before the eyes." It is part of the narrative process, the exposition part of a writing, where the writer reminds the reader of a group of ideas or images, to draw the mind sequentially through a thought process.

I googled enargia to find a useful link/definition (see above) and also came across this site, which seems cool, too.

I started this post with defining enargia because I want to explain why I have hundreds of scraps of paper tacked to the walls of my office, and to focus in on one particular scrap. I surround my desk with little reminders of things both pressing (next semester's schedule edits) and timeless (quotations that remind me why I do what I do). I'm practicing a physical enargia, bringing these images before my eyes every day as I sit down to work.

One scrap has a quotation from Henry James:
"We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

I didn't know the quotation's context when I first copied it down.   You can click the Henry James link above to read a synopsis of _The Middle Years_ , the short story from which the quotation is taken, or you can forge your own meaning as I did.

I think about my work, the passions that drive me, as the art I am in the process of creating.  I keep getting up each morning to do it again. I don't always know that I'm doing in "right," just that I'm doing it, that I'm driven to do it, and quite possibly I am getting better at it because I keep doing it.

Let's hope this proves true for my blogging as well ;)

Welcome

My first post... a friend suggested I start with a list.

Things that are on my mind from time to time:

Adams State College

Alamosa High School Knowledge Bowl

AmeriCorps

Archeology

Architecture

Arts education

Beer

Bees

Biking

Book club

Coffee

Colorado

Colorado Field Institute

Community Gardens

Community radio

Co-ops

Creativity

Design

Developmental Education

Education

Education Innovation

Geology

Good food

Grant writing 

Gratitude

Higher Education

Hispanic Serving Institutions

Homemaking

Honey

Hot springs

How the brain works

Humor

Interdisciplinary projects

Lawrence University

Learning Theory

Linguistics

Local Foods, Farm to Table 

Love

Mead

Mediation

Meditation

Music

NPR

Organic farming

Philosophy

Photography

Planning

Poetry

Reading

Rhetoric

Salsa dancing

Sense-making

Service

Snowboarding

Soccer

Social Justice Education

Social media

Softball

Steel Drums

Supplemental Instruction

Supporting underrepresented students

Sustainability

Tango

Theater

Tina Fey

Travel

Universal Design

Walking

Writing

Yoga

No Qs or Zs yet.  Just like and old-school phone.