I was talking to a woman whose relationship is in crisis. She wants more commitment; marriage, a settled home. She and her boyfriend have been together for five years but the more she pushes him for an answer, the more he retreats. He tells her that he is committed, that he has told her he loves her, and asks, why isn’t that enough? She cannot answer except to say; “because it’s not.”
One of my favourite phrases is “I don’t know”, which might be considered as a form of fantastic stupidity until you consider this. If I say I don’t know, then somebody will tell me what I need to know. Useful, huh?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “sorry” recently – and not in that terribly English way of apologising to people as we stumble past them to get to our seats in the theatre. Frankly, after that litany of apologies, I’m exhausted by the time I reach the middle of the row. I have been reflecting on the other ways in which we use the word, as means of avoiding a difficult truth. “I’ve said I’m sorry. What more do you want?” That careless dismissal happened to me recently and did nothing to solve the difficulties between us. Instead, it increased them.
Words are powerful. We should not be careless with them; yet we fling them around like so much confetti. My darling dad died last week. I am in pieces but my heart is broken into yet more fragments every time somebody says to me, “It’s for the best. He was ninety. His time had come.”
And so I must nod my head and agree that yes, it is for the best because to say otherwise would sound selfish, even callous. Whereas, in truth, I want to cry, “Whose best? Certainly not mine.”