Boy, apologizing is cathartic. Imagine gripping a sharp piece of glass. Gripping it hard. No matter how strong you are, you won’t win. You might want to crush the glass, but that isn’t what happens. What happens is that your own strength is your very weakness. The stronger you are, the more harm you do to yourself. The glass will always win.
Holding a grudge is gripping the glass. Not dwelling on the past loosens the grip a little. But apologizing lets the glass fall from your hand. Your wounds begin to heal.
If someone has wronged you, hurt you – done something worthy of the grudge in the first place – you may find yourself balking at the idea that you should apologize to them. You may accept the premise that holding the anger isn’t healthy, but apologizing? For what?!
Let’s start with a shocking but helpful axiom: If you are angry at someone, there is absolutely something you could apologize for.
If you start with that as a given truth and begin to truly look, you’ll probably find something. Even if you can’t find a single thing you should own, maybe because you were truly the target of some random attack, then you still have one last resort – apologizing for being angry. Reacting in anger and hatred instead of understanding and patience.
I can hear the resistance. “Someone randomly attacks me and I owe them an apology for being angry about it?!”
You don’t owe them anything. This isn’t about them.
It’s about you.
Apologizing is a way to build empathy. To release anger and hatred from your heart. Where, let me be clear, it is killing you. You don’t want to grip that shard of glass in your hand, right? Well, you certainly don’t want it in your heart.
When someone wrongs you, you can be hurt once or twice, and it’s your choice. The first hurt is what the other person inflicts on you. The second and far worse injury is what you inflict on yourself if you shove that glass deep down inside your heart.
Don’t. No one ever died from an apology.
The Opportunity Machine 