Let's stop and talk about forgiveness and apologizing for a second. I would like to believe that I am a very forgiving person. WHAT? I am, fuck you. When you're as neurotic and as easily prone to being upset as I am, I believe it's practically a necessity if you don't want to end up cold, alone and dead. That's something I never really understood about angry people in general; they're often aware of the voracious tempers they have, yet most of them have their heads stuck too far up their asses to realize that they need to stop grinding the axe every once in a while. And there's a dirty joke in that last sentence, but I'm too busy making a point to work with it.
Forgiveness is taken for granted far too much in this day and age. Really. For people who screw up a lot, they often fail to appreciate how much that little personality trait has let them get away with so much shit. And even if most of the screw-ups are forgiven, they're unapologetic; how many people who are forgiven for doing something prone to doing it again? Far too much than I'm comfortable with, frankly. There are those people who deserve to be forgiven, because they intend on at least trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. Then there are others who will stay the same no matter what, and it's selfish is what it is.
The word "sorry" is probably the cheapest word in the English language. If you betray someone's trust or are offering condolences to someone for tragedy and that brief, ugly, two-syllable word is all you have with you, then I recommend grabbing a dictionary and start bullshitting your way through a conversation until you pick up on something else. People think it's the magic fix-all word. Piss me off? "I'm sorry." That's all they think it takes, and they usually don't end up doing a damn thing to change their behavior so it doesn't happen again. Which again, is selfish. Others will only choose to accommodate themselves so much and be forgiving before the screw-up is given up on.
The people who deserve forgiveness go beyond that; they don't just use the words, they show it. They might try to alter themselves a bit to accommodate the people around them, or they might try to perform a gesture they wouldn't normally do under most circumstances that says "I mean it this time." What if they screw up again? Well hell, at least they could say that they didn't try. Failure isn't a begrudging thing if they were trying. Unless you try too little and you're just sort of half-assing it, but most people can pick up on that usually.
On the most trivial and petty level, apologizing and forgiveness is about who's right and who's wrong. But when it actually matters, it has little or nothing to do with who's right or who's wrong. It just means that you value your relationship with that person more than your ego, which is what a lot of people seem to overlook. A large ego is the worst thing to have in a friendship or relationship, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be quick to forgive, either. Some people need that ego to keep their judgments and standards realistic, so it's also possible to have too small of an ego. You know those people. Those people who say they're sorry for everything, so they just completely undermine the hell out of its meaning. At least when somebody with an enormous ego says they're sorry, you know it means something.
Realistically speaking though, do some people deserve to be forgiven for everything? No. Not saying that people can't always change, but sometimes both just have to know when to throw in the towel and go "You know, we can only do so much before we realize that something isn't working here and this is no longer worth it." Giving up isn't the sunshine, candies and lovely ending people wish for if they think they can tough it out, but sometimes that's what it takes to move on to greener pastures. Hell, sometimes it takes more strength to admit when something isn't working than to stick with it until the bitter end.
So there's your moral lesson for the day. The people who need to read this the most probably won't, so that's all I have to say on that.
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