"Oh yeah? I hope you learned a lesson."
That is what I occasionally I want to say to some people who says "sorry" to me.
Now, I'm not claiming that I am a perfect person, nor am I forcing everybody to become perfect. But there is a point where you have to let the person really learn a lesson from their mistakes. What I am starting to feel quite recently is that, people are starting to take lightly the things that come out of their mouths. The everyday phrase, "how are you" is a classic example. How many of you just give the mediocre answer and say "good?" And how many of you say "how are you?" to someone and you don't really care about how they reply to your question? Some people I know don't even answer the question "how are you?" and move onto different conversation.
"Sorry" is another thing that I have noticed that people are just "saying." Make no mistake. I often do this as well; I make the same mistakes. So this writing is not just to blame people but also as a lesson for all of us: the phrase "sorry," isn't just an expression of apology, but an expression of your determination to do something about it in the future.
Allow me to give you couple of cases.
1. BYU is a very crowded school, especially during 11am - 3pm.Thousands of people come and go from class rooms to class rooms. Campus gets really busy every 10 minutes before the hour. Now, we are all trying to get to our class but sometimes we all bump into our old friends: old roommates, old mates from hometown, mission companions, etc. When that happens, we all want to stop and say hello; catch up for a minute or two and get their contact information to hang out later. I see no problem. I do that all the time.
But this doesn't become okay when you stop walking in the middle of the sea of people and start talking to your friends. (Actually, I see boy girl doing this a lot more frequently than any other group of people; boy flirting with girls and girls flattering with what the boys say). Why is that a problem? YOU ARE BLOCKING everybody's way.
Well, we are kind and charitable people. So we walk around these people and move on with our own lives. But recently I'm starting to see more and more of people stopping the middle of overflowed hallway or campus and I'm starting to think that lots of people are starting to lose their manners.
So one day, on purpose, I said "excuse me". They said "oh sorry." I appreciated their “sorry" comment but I don't appreciate their unwillingness to move away from the crowd and move to the corner. That really pissed me off. So that "SORRY" didn’t mean anything to him. It's just a thing that they say to get away from things that they perhaps don't realize doing wrong. How much clearer should I be??? In any case, they weren't really “sorry”. And they will never learn a lesson unless someone directly tells them "Yeah you should be sorry; you are on everybody's way. I hope you learned a lesson." If nobody does, when would they ever learn? Should we send them to Chicago? New York??? These are big and busy cities. There, they should be able to learn a lesson. There must be SOME people bold enough to say "I hope you learned a lesson."
2. Students are busy. "Time is money" is the old adage and we all agree with that. I am very picky with how I spend my time. Every minutes count for me. I try to invest my time during the week so I can relax on the weekend.
Occasionally, I schedule a time to study in a group. What follows inevitably is that some people just happen to be late; there is always one person who comes in late and has everyone wait for few minutes.
If this happens only once or twice, that’s okay; I can tolerate that--even if the person was late 30 minutes. I have a little patient for that. But I do not tolerate (and I am not the only one who do not tolerate this) someone who continuously comes late and says "I'm so sorry. I'll be better next time" and rarely comes on time. I mean, where did the courtesy go? What are these people thinking? Oh and it is especially rude when someone calls on the phone and says “sorry” and tell us that he/she will be late for another 40 minutes. What are they thinking? When do they ever learn to be more courteous? Obviously there has to be someone who has to say "Yeah you should be sorry; you wasted everybody’s time. I hope you learned a lesson." Should we wait till they get the job and get fired few weeks later because they can't keep their appointments? In any case, being late for so many thing can lose you friends, job and money (time=money).
3. Laughter is good. It makes our lives much happier. It uplifts our minds and allows us to have an enjoyable time. But sometimes laughter is taken too far. It becomes “Loud laughter” which don’t necessarily bring a good spirit (it may be bringing some sort of spirit to the person who’s laughing but it definitely doesn’t to some other people who are listening to it). Now, you are born with a loud laughing habit, that’s okay (although I encourage you to change how you laugh). But it’s not okay when you are loud laughing in middle of the night and while many others are trying to sleep.
… What? Am I talking about my roommates? Well maybe; maybe not. Judge me however you want. My point of this story is, when we tell you to be quiet, they tell us “sorry” but they never stop. In Japanese language, telling someone to stop doing something over and over again is called “being an underpaid teacher at fool’s school.” I really do feel like a fool just telling people the same thing over and over again. It is so ridiculous! It is my understanding that "loud laughter" is discouraged in the church. In any case, they are never sorry if they countinue to laugh out loud.
These are but few of the examples. Do you get my point? I mean, when are people really “sorry”? Unless the person has a sober mind, they never are sorry. Someone needs to tell them they aren’t really sorry unless they do something about they said they are sorry about.
IF YOU ARE NOT REALLY SORRY then DON'T SAY SORRY AT ALL.
Am I making sense or am I wrong?
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