Apologies – of course（謝罪 - もちろん）

A friend recently asked me why I never talk to my family anymore. The reality is that some of them disowned me.  I left home to seek fame and fortune as a bass guitarist.  I never found either of them but the journey I under took changed me forever.   What little common ground existed between my family and my self was swept away.   I found that we had become so different that I could not even communicate with them.  Not genuinely.  Not rationally. They simply had no empathy for my experiences as a human being.  For them, only their experiences are valid.   Only their views matter. 

But more importantly, the primary reason I have no interest in resolving this decades long estrangement is that no one in my family ever apologizes.   I have never heard a single one of them apologize for anything they have done.  And I must say their list of transgressions, against one another, is long.  They never say they are sorry.  Not my parents, not my brothers, not my sisters.

I know I never fit in with them but why am I so different from them? Why do I never hesitate to apologize?  Is it my self-confidence?  Is it my humility?  Was it the failed struggle to become famous?  Was it the hearts I’ve broken?  Was it the times my heart was broken?  Was it the guns pushed in my face?  Was it the beatings or choking on my own blood?  Was it the cold and starvation of my homelessness?  Was it the realization of how ridiculously imperfect I am? 

Because I left home and never looked back their transgressions against me are few and feeble.  But I cannot tolerate this concept of never apologizing - of never admitting that you have caused grief to another.   It is abhorrent to me.  Do I have any regrets about having no family, no history?  Absolutely not.  They are strangers to me now and not a particularly pleasant sort to be sure.  There is no bitterness or animosity.   There is nothing - except reflection. 

Apologies are critical to human relationships.  They let other human beings know that we too are human with empathy for them and that we would not wish such injury to ourselves.  Yet sometimes the injuries are far too grievous to be rectified with just an apology.  But despite this we apologize because the inherent condition of any apology is the promise not to cause injury again.  This is true whether it involves a single individual, a group of people, or an entire nation. 

 - Just a peasant 

 Photo of a coral reef in Pohnpei