There are three words I absolutely despise saying: I am sorry. See, remorse is funny. It’s the precursor to redemption and a byproduct of doing the wrong thing. Yet, we all feel remorse while simultaneously avoiding those two magic words. We let remorse fester and eat us up while we turn blue in the face, unable to blurt out those healing syllables. All too often, we just say “I’m sorry” not to exclaim our remorse, but more so to appease the other party, who, in our perfect world, is now swooning all over us because we had the great courage to admit we were wrong (even though surely we couldn’t be wrong). Outside of the obvious personal examples we’ve all seen in our own lives, courtrooms wait with bated breath, lip-syncing the words for the accused, hoping that an inkling of remorse stains the pages of an otherwise cut-and-dry case to say to the world “Look! The justice system has rehabilitated that man!” After all, why would anyone ever fake remorse? The whole point of saying that you’re sorry is to show that you’re ready to take future steps to change. But how often do we, as creatures of habit, simply say that we’re sorry and carry on happily until we burst our tires again on the next set of spikes and have to go through that process all over again? To assume it is any different in the legal world is naïve and a part of why so many outsiders have such little faith in the system. It’s like a scene from a movie where as soon as the parents step out of sight, the child smears the walls with paint, and then cries their heart out, ultimately being granted their seventeenth second chance. Rehabilitation seems to be there in principle, but it’s quite literally just a cardboard cutout that flutters away at the tiniest gust of wind.
I think the problem with remorse and rehabilitation and all those great concepts on paper is that they avoid the nuance innately present in human interactions. It’s much easier to apologize and then actually make the requisite changes if you know the person you’re apologizing to and share some kind of meaningful connection beyond the level of acquaintance or friend in quotation marks. To be very blunt and bordering on mean-spirited, I want to apologize to the people I care about. I want them to know that I have placed them in an exclusive category of people that I am willing to make changes for, not to those I have no real connection to. Not to keep tying this back to the legal world, but the Indigenous concept of dispute resolution and its substitutability for the trial system is a sight to behold in that regard. Facilitating a dialogue between people who know each other, understanding the true impact of your actions, and being able to look your victim in the eyes is severely dehydrated in the colonial legal system and it leads to people thinking justice has not been served.
I learned years ago that you should never say sorry unless you mean it and you want to make the necessary changes. After all, there is only so much recidivism people can take before they give up on you. The funny thing is that a second chance is pretty much always around the corner. People may give up on you, but it’s on you to show them that the person they gave up no longer stands in front of them today and that you don’t need any more second chances. Unfortunately, it is a very active and engaging effort. I have had many instances where I’ve apologized for something and had to catch myself from repeating the same mistakes. But I caught myself, and that’s what matters. I caught myself because it was important to me. Pretty stereotypical Canadian thing to admit, but I’ve become very proficient at being wrong. Rather than starting a petty argument or engaging in meaningless back-and-forth dialogue that does nothing but bounces the ball around an empty room, just say sorry. The nice thing about being law students and lawyers is that we don’t actually have to argue or advocate for something all the time; we can pick and choose our battles. Learn to be a fierce advocate in your professional life but a compassionate and compromising individual in your personal life. Strong academic performance is always good, but being an emotionally intelligent human being may be even better. Through it all, always be open to making positive changes, not for someone else’s sake, but for your own betterment. Lastly, and this goes for genuinely anything: do things with only the best of intentions or don’t do them at all.