SORRY v/s EGO

I remember fighting ‘punches and pinches’ with my brother, when we were children. It, sometimes, would get so bad that my mother would tell me to keep a ‘safe distance’ of two feet from my brother. But the one thing we were taught was to say ‘sorry’; and when one of us did, the other would always respond with ‘sorry doesn’t make a dead man alive’! Silly memories from sillier days…

But that’s a lesson that stays with me till today. Though, of course, my brother’s three year old would refuse to apologise to her older sister, always arguing that it wasn’t her fault!

I guess I was just naïve when I was three.

So it makes me wonder why people find it so difficult to apologise when that’s the easiest thing that one could do – it builds stronger relationships, ends a fight/quarrel (thereby saving a lot of time, energy and heartache!) and settles disputes non-violently. Sure, we all have egos; and that isn’t the root of the problem. The problem is in having too much of an ego to the extent that it does not allow one to see another’s point of view or simply clouds any reasonable thinking.

But then, SORRY is a bigger word than EGO, more powerful and even earns you more points in a game of scrabble!

‘achcha ji main haari’

‘Yeh lo main haari piya’

‘ajjee rooth kar ab’

‘roothe roothe piya’

‘rooth ke humse kahin’

 ‘piya tu kaahe rootha re’