'Sorry' and 'Thank You'

Courtesy & Thanks : www.starnow.co.uk , Ashwini C N (ash-aqua-girl.blogspot.com)

Are you longing to say 'thank you' or desperate to say 'sorry'?

Is there someone who has changed the course of your life forever? Someone you never got the chance to thank properly? Or someone you’ve wronged in the past who you feel a burning need to apologise to? Do you long to talk to them but can’t find the courage to do it alone? What if you’ve lost touch with them altogether?

Living with an unpaid debt of gratitude or a long overdue apology can be an enormous burden. For many thousands of people, it’s often impossible to move on until you’ve had the chance to express your feelings in person. 

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I seriously do not comprehend the logic behind people saying “No Sorry or Thank you among friends”. Ok, So who else are you going to say it to? Your Enemies? Seriously? It is understandable that in friendship, the small things that may instigate bigger spats can always be overlooked. Hence friends do not like or rather prefer it, if their friends refrain from saying sorry or thank you. But my question is, they are our friends, Next to our family, or even on par with our family, Shouldn’t we treat them better? Don’t they deserve a thank you for all that they’ve been doing? Don’t they deserve a word of Sorry for all the times we irritated them? Or are we taking them for granted?

For a minute, let’s just get back to the basics. Two questions. Why Sorry? Why Thank You?

People say Sorry when they are deeply disturbed with something which should have never happened in the first place. Well generally that’s what people do. We say sorry when we feel we’ve hurt someone or caused them pain without intending to. We say sorry because we get scared that our actions might have hurt the sentiments of our friend and we apologize for having caused them pain. It might be just one word, but it conveys a lot of thoughts.

We Thank others either for taking their time off to tell us something or do us a favour. We say Thank you, because we appreciate the efforts of someone takes for us and as a token of our appreciation we thank them. We say “Thank you “because we value their time and presence. We say Thank you because despite their numerous commitments they always manage to find time for us, and it is just a simple way of letting them know that we value that and not take it for granted.

Now back again to our friends. Why shouldn’t we let them know that we’re happy they are spending time with us? Why shouldn’t we let them know how we feel after that bitter spat? Why is this considered formal? After all they are the ones who are an integral part of our lives. They are the ones who would always stand by us. They are the ones who would never think twice to come to our rescue. When you say Sorry to a stranger for stepping on their foot and When you say “Thank You” to a stranger for picking up our bags, why shouldn't we say Sorry and Thank you to those who mean a lot to us? Is it that big a deal?

What good would it do, if you knew a thousand meaningless words, and you do not know the value of two words uttered earnestly by a sincere soul?

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Courtesy & Thanks : articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com

'Sorry' hardest word to say for millions


More than 50 percent of people are living with the guilt of not having been able to say sorry, or even thank you, to someone who they should have acknowledged, a survey has showed.

And 65 percent of those said that they had missed the opportunity or were simply not able to say the words.

The findings of the study found that the over-55s were most likely to get embarrassed when they made amends after many years.

The 25 to 34 age group emerged as the one that was most prepared to apologise late rather than never.

Psychotherapist Lynn Greenwood told the Daily Express said that saying sorry often helped people move on from what can become a festering guilt or resentment.

She said that by expressing gratitude, people get pleasure of passing on a small part of their joy.

The study was done for Wall to Wall Television, which is making 'The Gift' for the BBC, a programme that gives people a chance to say sorry or thank you to someone from their past.

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Mind set: Of thank you and sorry

Thank you and sorry are perhaps the first words we learn. And they stay with us right through our lives as yardsticks of our civility.

But when was the last time we said "thank you" or "sorry" without meaning to simply offload our burden of obligation or guilt? Indeed, these words no longer express what they are supposed to. Instead, they are used flippantly, thrown around without care, often reduced to an easy way of getting off the hook and evading meaningful action.

They may well be the most used words in times of political correctness. But they are clearly the most abused as well. The emotions of gratitude and apology are vital to the chain of human reciprocity. But in stripping them of sincerity, we also seem to be closing the doors on their benefits for us.

In almost all religious traditions, gratitude is a manifestation of virtuous character. "Gratitude, as it were, is the moral memory of mankind," wrote sociologist Georg Simmel. Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown defined gratitude as "that delightful emotion of love to him who has conferred kindness on us, the very feeling of which is itself no small part of the benefit conferred". German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer  wrote: "In ordinary life, we hardly realise that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."

The quality of being thankful implies the disposition to turn goodwill into action and the inclination to return kindness. A "thank you" denotes the attitude of positive acceptance, a determination to employ the kindness or blessing imaginatively and inventively. It connotes the humility of considering oneself the recipient of undeserved merit. "He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first instalment on his debt," observed Roman statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Gratitude comes endowed with the power to help us create the life we want and can be therapeutic. Gratefulness emanates from looking at what someone or something has done for us. It is, therefore, about positivity of outlook, which, in turn, generates optimism and energy. Conversely, the lack of gratefulness breeds negativity and despair. In fact, proponents of positive psychology, a recent branch of psychology that studies the strengths and virtues enabling individuals and communities to thrive, consider gratitude to be a pleasant emotional state like happiness, joy, love, curiosity and hope.

The lack of gratefulness is largely because we take things for granted, brashly presuming that they are either our rightful due or are far less than what we deserve. What holds us back from being grateful is such lack of contentment and an endless craving for more. Often, we insist on waiting for the results of an action or a blessing to show up before expressing gratitude. This indicates a dearth of trust and faith, which pays us back in our own coin.

In a way, gratitude helps us realise the benefits of mindful meditation, which is all about acknowledging and feeling connected with every breath and blessing of life. Invariably, a life with gratefulness as its pivot is also a solution to the ills spawned by insatiable human yearnings.

We might wonder where the need for gratitude is if we pay for goods and services in money. Gratitude doesn't even fetch us discounts. In fact, there is a subtle line of distinction between gratitude and ingratiation. So much so that when someone thanks us too many times, we start doubting his intention. However, as philosopher Adam Smith averred, gratitude is a vital civic virtue, essential for the healthy functioning of societies. He called gratitude a part of the moral capital required for human societies to flourish.

The act of offering and accepting an apology is as profound and healing a human interaction as that of expressing gratitude. But while the offhand "sorry about that" keeps flying around, our ego prevents us from realising its full potential. The word loses its impact when we refrain from acknowledging our offence ("Sorry for whatever I may have done") or throw in a self-serving conditionality ("I am sorry if you were hurt"). If the purpose of an apology is only to say, "While I don't think I was wrong, I will apologise because you say so", it is best not to offer one, for, the worst we can do is to insult someone's sensitivity or intelligence by such treatment.

Bestowed with the power to effect reconciliation and mend strained relationships, an apology must involve acknowledging the offense adequately, expressing genuine remorse and offering appropriate reparations, including a commitment to make changes. "A stiff apology is a second insult," said novelist and poet G K Chesterton. "The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt."