An Apology Notebook

Posted by: Michael | 07/06/2013

An Apology Notebook

Each day I do many things that I quickly regret and almost as quickly forget. And yet, although the details are forgotten it seems to me that a certain malaise, a miasma of dull anguish renders everything gray and undefined. Well, maybe it’s not always qute that bad but it seems to me that I am more often than not feeling contrite for having said, done or thought something that I know was unskillful and have come up with precious few ways to discharge the guilt.

Yesterday, however, was a different story. While listening to a Dhamma talk on http://www.abhayagiri.org, I heard one of the ajahns mention something about being the type of person who goes back and asks for forgiveness from people even for things which we often gloss over like a snide remark or a failure to give someone our full attention. At that moment I remembered an episode that had happened earlier in the morning with my wife where I had said something in an unskillful way so I quickly jotted it down in a notebook to bring up later. I did mention it to her later it wasn’t in the best of circumstances so it didn’t come off as the apology I had hoped so I’ll have to do better next time. Still, there was something about simply acknowledging that I had done something blameworthy that seemed worthwhile in and of itself. So, I intend to keep an apology notebook (offline for now) so that I can not only bring more attention to my actions but to ask forgiveness of those I harm day in and day out.