Listing Apologies

Toyota scrambles to fix their automotive problems while their president bows to his audience and apologizes. Is he asking forgiveness for the defective part—forgiveness for ignoring the problem for years? Forgiveness from the families of people who died while the problem lay dormant beneath a desire to will it away?

It is the same bow, without the physical act, before the unsuspecting spouse. This past year television audiences watched political figures flagellate themselves. How often the words, "I want to apologize for my actions to my family, those who voted for me..." Simply change the names and play the same tape.

Get caught. Apologize. Get caught, prostrate yourself and ask for forgiveness. It's the walk. The walk that takes you to the talk shows, to books either authored by the culprit or by the ghost or the grieved person.

When Icons fall the gossip wordmongers swoop down to recount the salacious details. Photos and videotapes air and someone always has yet another detail to share. The smallest dint in armor morphs into a rent from shoulder to shoulder.

Power corrupts. We all know that because Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…” His words still retain their veracity. Pithy phrases encapsulate thoughts quickly. Why spend time pondering?

**********
My mother was raised on the "proverbs" her mother learned in Poland or was it Russia? My grandmother lived close to the border and the border meandered— depending upon the cartographers who moved the demarcation line in tune with the artillery movements.

If I picked up a needle and thread to mend a button dangling from my sweater— my mother's gaze caught this act and she immediately said, "if you sew something you're wearing you'll sew up your brain." What did this mean? Any attempts to understand this, even in a metaphorical sense, met with "just don't do it."

I created an elaborate tale to justify the injunction. My great-grandfather was a talented tailor who made shirts for the gentry. One particular noble, pricked by a needle and short tempered, responded to the sting by warning my great-grandfather: "If you're not careful I will use that needle to have your brain sewn up into a pincushion." An unlikely tale that spawned a proverb.

**********

Apologies. Sorry I bumped into you. Did the people who rushed into a mall, anxious to purchase drastically reduced electronics only available to the first hundred people, apologize to the person who died during their stampede?

Do countries tally up the apologies necessary at the end of the fiscal year? Innocent people killed in wars. How do you offer that apology? Collateral damage?

Words sent out can't be reined back in as if they never escaped. They take on their own life and last for years. A Hasidic rabbi likened the words sent out to the feathers in a goose feather pillow. Open the pillow and shake out the feathers and then attempt to collect them all—a Herculean task. Words, like the feathers, find the crevasses and show up for years. No white out. No delete button—only apologies and a request for forgiveness for the errant, harmful words.

**********
I sharpen my pencil and begin my list—
I apologize for eating the last walnuts and taking the larger bowl of frozen vanilla yogurt.