6 Reasons Why "Sorry" Must Be Stricken From Any Vocabulary

Having recently been inundated with apologies (from my students who have waited until the last minute to do an assignment, to my recently ex-girlfriend who cheated on me after being together for over two years), I have begun to re-examine my absolute hatred of the expression, “I’m sorry.” It seems like everywhere I turn I am hearing it casually tossed about as a response to someone’s mistake. In fact, the word is bandied about so much it has become (at least to me) one of the most insincere sentiments available in the English language. We hold it up like a crucifix to ward off responsibility and accountability or to permit incredible acts of stupidity, disloyalty and mistrust on our part like it will make things better (and while we all know it doesn't, we still insist on throwing it out there like a band-aid on an amputation).

I’m not really sure what other people feel about it, but the more I look at the word, the more convinced I am it needs to be removed from the English language. Here are six reasons why I feel this is necessary (and careful – with enough watering and the continued application of sorry-based fertilizer, it will continue to grow).

#1 – Because We Aren’t – The very idea of being sorry is to indicate remorse or regret at something we have done, but in most cases, what we are indicating remorse about is getting caught and having to be punished for doing the thing we should not have been doing. Alternatively, we are regretting our lack of foresight in doing or not doing something in the first place, such as when my students come to me with late papers and want me to accept them without penalty. They aren’t sorry the paper is late – they are sorry they will get punished; more to the point, their apology is misdirected – they need to apologize to themselves, not to me.

In other cases, we are saying we’re sorry because we don’t want to do something but have been taught to feel guilty about not being able to drop everything for someone else, when really, we shouldn’t feel guilty. If I can’t help someone move, I shouldn’t have to apologize for it, nor should I have to apologize for work I cannot do because I’m overwhelmed with other work. I don’t feel sorry about it in the least when I can avoid doing someone else’s work for them.

#2 – Permits Procrastination – Turning back to my students again, I am amazed at how often they will come to me with an apology in hand for waiting until the last minute to do an assignment in the hopes that the apology will work, but I also can’t blame them, because their other teachers accept their apologies and remind them to be more diligent in the future (which the students are not, and the cycle of apology starts all over again). They know that their apology will be accepted, so they can inevitably delay starting an assignment, project, or other requirement until the last moment and hand in sub-par work because they can simply say they are sorry and all will be forgiven.

#3 – It’s a Doorway for Excuses – In keeping with procrastination, saying that one is sorry is an exercise in creative freedom: once you say you’re sorry, you need an excuse. My father likes to say, “Excuses are like assholes; everyone has one.” I often add “Not all of them work.” The annoying thing is that in the time it takes to come up with a decent excuse, the task in question could probably have been completed, and thus a great deal of time has been wasted as the project hasn’t been done and all the work that should have been done still needs to be done post-apology/excuse tandem.

We also tend to accept apologies alongside their necessary excuses without listening to them. How often has someone approached you with, “I’m sorry about X, but <insert excuse here>” to which you listened with half an ear because ideally it didn’t matter what they said, so long as they put effort into their BS, followed by a generic comment on your part about commitment, responsibility, and future improvements needed on their part before sending them off? Generic responses to a generic circumstance are just as ingrained in us.

#4 – Removes Accountability – It seems, at least among my students, that if they apologize, they do not expect to be punished for their actions or inactions. In the high school, I recently had a student try to submit her homework to me a day late because she missed class. My rule is firm – if you miss class when homework is due, you need to inform me in advance or I won’t accept it. When she apologized and gave her excuses, she was under the impression that she was no longer accountable for what she done and everything was fine. When I didn’t accept her homework, she stormed off, angry (most likely) at me because I was being a jerk, I’m sure. I don’t think it ever dawned on her to be mad at herself.

One of the biggest problems I see in the world is lack of accountability – people are less likely to take responsibility for what they do or don’t do, either passing the buck to some other hapless individual who will pass it on to someone else, or, if it lands on their lap with nowhere to go, will apologize profusely in the hopes that they will be absolved. Each time we accept their excuses without punishment, we teach them there is no accountability for this, when in fact, people should take responsibility.

#5 – Teaches Passivity (reaction, not pro-action) – By being permissive about apologies, we teach people to react to a situation instead of taking charge of it. Tied into the lack of accountability, we have this idea that as no one is accountable, we can be passive as an apology will be enough to get us by with minimal consequences. There are limits of course, but these are often pushed. Our passivity often manifests in procrastination (#2) and pushing the blame onto other sources rather than stepping up to the plate and taking charge.

An example of this goes back to my days in First Aid. I was working as a First Aid/Safety Inspector and when I identified a safety issue, I was told “Sorry, it’s not in the budget to deal with at this time.” An apology for a safety infraction? The attitude was that it hadn’t resulted in damage yet, so they weren’t going to fix it until later, but even having identified it, they “apologized” for not doing anything about it. Obviously #1 and #2 were also in play here.

#6 – Creates an Expectation of Forgiveness (Whether it is deserved or not) – When we say we’re sorry (whether we mean it or not), we expect to be forgiven. It’s almost a cultural expectation, and we learn it from the age when we are children.

“Mikey, did you hit Jessica?”

“Yes Mr. Dahling, I did.”

“I want you to apologize to Jessica right now.”

“I’m sorry Jessica.”

Jessica must now forgive Mikey rather than harbor rage and revenge fantasies against him. As employers, teachers, or human beings, there is an expectation that we will forgive because the “magic” word has been said, but the magic lies in the sincerity with which it is expressed, not simply the utterance. As JL Austin pointed out, a performative act needs sincerity (otherwise a TV show or movie marriage would be a real, legally binding marriage the moment the “priest” says “I now pronounce you man and wife.”), and more often than not our apologies are the most insincere reactionary comments to come out of our mouths. They are a reflex that kicks in, and are not conscious so much as unconscious based on years of training. Unfortunately we failed somewhere along the line to maintain the sincerity that is associated with it – or did we ever teach sincerity when we taught people to say “I’m sorry”?

So think about the next time you say or hear someone say, "I'm sorry" and ask yourself (or them): was this really necessary and why was it said?