A nursery rhyme came to my head when I saw this topic and I believe we all know the Five Magic words rhymes.
Sorry is indeed a magic word, this is one word that has proven itself over and over again. As short as the letter of words may be, it can create chaos when not used at the point it is needed.
Some years back, I was with a friend and my older brother. My brother was receiving a call while I and my friend were chatting. Some bikes sped pass us, they ran too fast so I and my friend cursed them in a loud voice.
We continued chatting after and suddenly, two bikes returned. Fours guys alighted from the bikes and were coming in our direction.
They were thugs and were shouting while asking if we were the ones who cursed them but we didn't answer and one of them said he was sure we were the ones who cursed them. We were the only ones there so it would be easy for them to beat us and leave.
One of them wanted to grab my friend when my brother intervened.
"Chairman", he said from where he was and the guys paused for a moment.
My brother walked up to them and just said, "please don't be offended, they are sorry". The guys looked at our faces and even hailed my brother before leaving.
I looked at my brother and asked if he knew them before but he didn't.
He knew how effective saying sorry can be so he used the power of just one word. Sorry is a language understood by everyone, a lot of toddlers even understand it because their parents say it to them when they are crying and they know that they are meant to stop crying when they hear sorry.
Because everyone understands what sorry means, it suppresses anger and many other things.
We are humans and bond to make mistakes. It is impossible for us not to make mistakes and whenever we do, the best thing for us to do is apologize.
A lot of chaos happening in the world today could have been averted if only people could drop their egos and just say sorry. I am someone who usually admits mistakes and apologizes immediately so whether you take the apology or not is left to you because once I apologize, my conscience will be cleared since I have done the right thing.
Ending my relationship with someone is something I find very easy to do as long as I notice that we aren't doing ourselves any good but I notice I usually don't let it end on a bad note. Even when I am the victim, I still go on to apologize just to make sure that we can still greet each other when our path cross again.
Four years ago, I quit my relationship with a lady. I told her while we were having fun with our other friends and she slapped me.
I felt really embarrassed and she went on shouting not minding that we were in public. Normally I was supposed to be pissed but I controlled my anger and told her that I was sorry. That alone made her stop the noise and she listened to me. At the end of the discussion, she left.
We didn't communicate for a long time but she called me many weeks after to say hello. I was surprised because she admitted that we really need to move on with our lives differently.
Today, we are friends and a lot of troubles could have happened if I had refused to say just the word sorry that day.