We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.
This is a clip of the poem We Have Come To Be Danced by Jewel Mathieson. Some line of the poem has always moved me. Right now, it’s that last line there, about apology.
I’ve been noticing recently how much I apologize. I caught myself apologizing yesterday for my own physical pain. I very often apologize for my mood. I apologize for my actions or words. I apologize when I feel I’ve disappointed someone else.
Today, hanging out with my friend Luke, I noticed that apology was more a way of being. I wasn’t offering an apology- for some reason, I felt apologetic in general. As though something deep within me was unkempt and I had to be sorry.
I reflected on apologizing for things that don’t require an apology, and also the profound difference: apologizing for something versus apologizing for yourself.
Take a second with these ideas.
I realized that apology is a tricky thing. There’s a tipping point where it goes from Light to Dark. A genuine apology is Light. But to extend apology into a sinking, sickening sensation of no longer being worth anything then becomes Dark. “I’m sorry I’m agitated” versus “I am an agitated being and I’m sorry for my presence.”
To give an example: just this past weekend, my energy was weird. Who knows why- I had dark images floating around in me which resulted in a tweaked edginess. We are mysterious creatures. I apologized to those in my company, but I also began to feel really bad for my energy and that I couldn’t shift it.
See, while it’s one thing to notice how I may have affected someone else and to feel sorry for that, it’s a whole other ballgame to tell myself that it was bad or wrong to have been in whatever state I was in.
This is such a new idea for me, and maybe for you- the idea that apology can be taken too far. Shouldn’t it be OK to not be quite OK?
.... (Yes!)
Gosh. Somewhere along the way in my life I set my standards so high. Things like crying or yelling or farting or being tired or whatever now required apology.
But I would like my love for myself be so big that is can encompass this stuff, too. Like a health plan with broader coverage, I just want to be able to feel, have bodily functions, make mistakes....offer up an apology if needed...
and then move on.
And I can. I can extend my own love-plan to cover anything I’d like. What I can’t do is be sure that other people will agree, and sometimes that’s tough. We sometimes forget that the people we love do not belong to us- they can come or they can go.
But we must be who we are. Don’t let this stop you from widening your compassion for yourself. It will make the apologies you DO choose to give more sincere. People will be at ease in your presence, or even take refuge in it. Most importantly, the people in your life will know that the love you offer to them comes from an honest place instead of from attachment- it’s a genuine gift, instead of recompense.
Less apologizing will also free up tons of mental space for other stuff in your life.
But most most importantly, we must not apologize too much for ourselves because it slows down our journey. This little story says it well:
"There are stories of Tibetan Buddhist Lamas trying to banish demons with exorcisms and spells, to no avail. But when the lamas extended compassion to them, the demons found peace and were liberated from their painful state."
Love will help you evolve.
Love,
Molly
