pain · you regret that you never gained a thing · relationships · children
what you just named
You came in pain, not joy: that you regret that you never gained a thing, in your relationships — specifically with children — and you reached for the Stoic voice first. That's what you've named. Listen now to what it answers.
- Stoic
Spirit
mind
The not-apologizing was upheld by an opinion you did not know you held — that apology was the same as weakness, or that the father position required not yielding, or that you would lose something by saying you were wrong. Marcus dissolves the structure: take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away. Take away the opinion that apologizing diminishes you, and what is left is the simple act of saying you were wrong. The harm you did is what it was. The apology repairs not the harm but the relationship — and you do not lose by it. You gain the thing you have been protecting against losing.
heart
Apologize once for the specific thing. Drop the opinion that it costs you something. It does not.
connection
You stand in the line of every father who finally apologized to his grown child for a specific old wrong and discovered the relationship had been waiting for it — every man whose acknowledgment of being wrong was the doorway, not the wound he feared.
Action
Today, name one specific thing you should have apologized to your child for and never did. Pick a moment in the next week to say it. Plainly. No long explanation.
Reference
Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.7
practice
Apologizing for one specific thing; dropping the opinion that it costs you something
principle
The not-apologizing was held in place by a false opinion about what apology meant
value
Apology as doorway, not as cost