LEARNING TO TALK
All evil karma ever committed by me since of old.
On account of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance.
Born of my body, mouth and thought. Now I atone for it all.
—Verse of Atonement
I stared at the take-home letter from my daughter’s preschool teacher. It dealt with conflict resolution, or the indelicate fact that outside of our arms, our children were likely to claw and kick one another.
“We don’t emphasize saying ‘I’m sorry’ until children are able to have a conceptual understanding of what it means,” the letter read. To me, that was lunacy. I’d learned a little magic in my two years as a mother, and the magic was this: I’m sorry.
In no other relationship had I seen, really seen, the ruin that could be wrought by my own attitude, the trembling and awe I could produce by a loosened yell, a door slam, or an angry face. No other relationship had the precarious proximity my daughter and I shared. I couldn’t predict precisely when a wayward push would break the last thread of my restraint, but I could predict that it would happen. We each have our breaking points. When I breached mine, I bore witness to its savage aftermath. My daughter’s spirit imploded. Her sense of security was crushed.
And thus began my need to run, indeed race, to the instant healing and restoration magically granted by the utterance “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t very well teach her to use those words unless I had familiar access to them myself, and I was sorely out of practice.
At some point in our lives, “I’m sorry” becomes a very difficult thing to say (perhaps at the point we have a conceptual understanding of the words). The weight of its responsibility seems too heavy, the admission too severe, the losing, yes the losing, is too dear. We engineer other ways to say it, appended with other words to ease its bearing or divert its meaning. We want peace on our terms, you see. We want to keep our supremacy intact. We want to end the battle by winning, not by ending. These contrivances begin, “I’m sorry, but . . .” After the “but” comes self-defense and justification, explanation and blame, a fist in a glove. Then there is the imperial “I’m sorry that you feel that way.” There is no sorry in this kind of sorry, and we know it, but that’s the kind of sorry that we trade in. No wonder hostilities never cease.
It had been a long time since I had said, simply, “I’m sorry,” and let the silence afterward enfold and erase the harm done. But I begin to do it now, because my need to undo is urgent and unquestioned. “I’m sorry,” I say, when I’ve buckled and the sky has fallen. “I’m sorry,” I say to someone who has no conceptual understanding of the words. “I’m sorry,” I say to myself. And, miraculously, the world is made right again. The whole world, the only world my daughter and I live in, the fifteen hundred square feet that composes our universe. She holds no grudges; she doesn’t know how. When I say I’m sorry, we can begin anew, awash in love and tenderness toward each other.
These two little words I’m sorry show me everything about myself. They show me how attached I am to my hurts and grievances. How stingy I am with my whole heart. How seldom I mean what I say. How simple it is to achieve peace. True peace, unconditional peace. In reality, peace is always right here—everything getting along just fine, thank you—until I exile myself with my anger and self-centeredness, my ignorant perception that I, the innocent party, am separate from you, the egregious offender. In this case, the egregious offender in the purple tutu and bunny ears with a finger up her nose. (If I could stop still long enough to see, really see, what is in front of me instead of dwelling on the bleak landscape in my head, I could easily erupt into laughter instead of anger, and that would be the end of it.)
Saying you’re sorry is a rather miraculous act of atonement, and all the great religions talk up atonement. There must be something there, but what is it? Atonement means reconciliation or reparation. Maezumi Roshi, who found wisdom on every page of Webster’s, used to marvel at the very appearance of the word, because there, hidden in plain sight, is the whole enchilada: at-one-ment. Being one with everything. Unified. Harmonious. Being sorry, truly sorry, closes the gap that has grown wide between you and your beloved. The gap doesn’t really exist, but when you think it does, it does. This is your new spiritual practice: saying “I’m sorry.” Say “I’m sorry” and let the pure power of your intention put the world back in one piece. It works, and you can tell. There is always a feeling of reunion after you do this; there is a feeling of coming home.
I’m learning to apologize without any regard for whether I’m first or last, right or wrong. Sometimes it seems that all I ever do is make amends. That’s okay. Every time I do, it has a better outcome than all the times I don’t.
But there’s more I need to learn, because words—chosen carefully, spoken calmly—help me recognize and release feelings that otherwise intensify. I practice pausing, breathing, and saying, “I’m angry right now.” Or “I’m frustrated right now.” Or “I’m sad right now.” How did I get this far along without ever being free to say these things? In nursery school they call this “using your words.” I’m well into my forties and just now cracking into the pre-K curriculum! When I speak a feeling, it changes me, it changes my body, it loosens the noose and lowers the temperature. It clarifies the situation for me and for everyone around me. Outbursts are allayed. Spoken, these words by themselves are safe, but unspoken, they smolder into fire and brimstone.
I am also discerning what little needs to be said. Any word that causes hurt, any word that degrades, any word that poisons the pristine air, is better left in your mouth, dissolving on your tongue so you can taste your own bitter brew. What power there is in these gusts, and we alone have the power to release or retain. This is mental training. This is meditation. These revelations take time to surface, which they do when I learn to give myself a time-out, retreating to the calm of a “quiet chair” in my bedroom. This backward step becomes something I do a lot. Soon, when my daughter happens to see me, sitting silently in my bedroom chair, she proffers apology on her own. She knows for herself when the world is out of whack, and she now has the means to make it right.
I know there are people—because I know it in me—who cannot push themselves past the chasm. Saying “I’m sorry” to anyone, least of all their child, is impossible. They live in a labyrinth of twisted logic, imprisoned by the high walls of hierarchy. Behind this defense they are not strong; they are wobbly and weak. To them I say: I’m sorry. Master Dogen tells us, “Kind speech has the power to turn the destiny of a nation.” That is not wimpy.
Even as I’m learning about myself, my daughter is learning that she, too, has the strength to take responsibility and the means to change the world.
Words are magic. All words are, not just please and thank you. The words my daughter will use are the ones she hears; the words I want her to use she must hear from me. So when I’m alarmed by her annoying use of the imperative, her bossy instructions to me without the sweetening of a “please,” I listen to myself for a while. How much of what I say to her is a curt command? Nearly all of it.
How would I have her speak? With all the subtlety, compassion, kindness, and power that is in my own magical vocabulary, when I learn to talk.