Tag: amends

Integrity

I was reminded of last year’s Christmastime adventures when I heard that Southwest had agreed to pay a $140 million fine for the nightmares that they created for so many of us, last holiday travel season. Last year, Southwest, thankfully, at least got my family to our destination (the day after Christmas) to Texas. We were travelling to Texas for my mother-in-law’s funeral. Unfortunately our returning flights were abruptly cancelled by Southwest. There were no alternative flights available until well into January, so my husband and I, and our four adult children (all who needed to get back to work, school and our individual lives), took turns driving the 18 hour drive back to Florida, in a rental car. Our case wasn’t the worst case scenario. There were stories of people missing weddings and cancer treatments and other major events. I remember being so utterly relieved to have gotten to Texas in time for the funeral, as so many flights around us were being cancelled. These cancellations had nothing to do with weather or mechanical issues on planes or sicknesses of crews. It turns out that Southwest had let their scheduling technology become outdated and at risk, and many of us paid the price for that error.

But do you know what? I don’t have any beef with Southwest. I would fly with them again in a heartbeat. They made a horrible mistake. They were terribly negligent with updating their technology. Southwest messed up in a big, big way. But what I noticed from the get-go, is that they owned their mistake. Their CEO and executives owned up to their egregious mistakes from the very start. We have never been so quickly refunded and compensated for our expenses, by a company, in our entire married life. Southwest took accountability immediately. They did not try to excuse themselves, cover things up, nor blame others. They accepted the consequences and they are making amends. Honestly, this experience of fully owning one’s mistakes, is such a rare occurrence in today’s world, that I might put Southwest up there with one of the companies I feel most loyal to, because I trust them. I trust them.

We all make mistakes, individually and as entities. But how many of us wholly take ownership of our mistakes, apologize sincerely, and then make appropriate amends? This is rare. This is called integrity and in my experience, Southwest showed true integrity in the way that they handled this atrocious mess. As their mottos says, “Low fares. Nothing to hide.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Mondays seem to be a good day to talk about apologies for messing up. All of my horoscopes today seem to be warning me to be careful with what I say, and how I say it. (I’m a Sag – this should be a daily, flashing red light warning for me.) I saw this quote in a store the other day:

“Apologize for your mistakes, not your feelings.“

Make sure that when you apologize, you have actually done something wrong, or hurtful. You never should apologize for just being you (and that includes having and experiencing your feelings). And for when you do make mistakes, remember this:

“Go get a plate and throw it to the ground.

Did it break? Yes.

Now say sorry to it. Sorry.

Did it go back to the way it was before? No.

Do you understand now?” – Mindset for Quote

I think that this is a good reminder that apologies don’t fix everything. That being said, I think that an apology is the first step towards amends. You can either leave the plate lying on the floor, broken to pieces, or you can express your deepest apologies, and do your best to glue it back together. Will it be the same as before? No. But, if the plate is gingerly cared for, and shown that it is worth being glued back together, perhaps what comes of it, may be even more beautiful and precious than it ever was before. I wrote about this years ago, when I talked about the Japanese process of Kintsugi:

Beauty in Brokenness

Have a great week!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

To Err is Human

There’s a scene in the movie Ingrid Goes West where two of the characters borrowed another friend’s truck and they don’t return it on time, causing him to miss an important event.  On top of that, they don’t answer his frantic calls and they drive the truck while intoxicated and high and wreck it, causing significant damage to it.  When they finally return the truck the next morning, dents and all, the apology given to the truck owner is so flimsy, light, and half-hearted, you would have thought they had just stepped on his toe.  “Sorry, it was an accident,” was basically the flippant, flat reparation given to the stunned victim.

The movie is a comedy of sorts and you do find yourself laughing at the absurd audacity of the lack of concern on the characters’ parts, for the serious distress and upset they caused for their friend.  I think why this scene seems so appallingly funny, is because most of us do the exact opposite.  When we do something wrong or make a mistake, we flog ourselves endlessly for days on end, until finally we find another mistake that we have made to punish ourselves for, and we move on to punishing ourselves for the new offense.

“Dwelling on mistakes will not erase them.” – Smart Thinking, twitter

Sometimes it feels like, if we beat ourselves up enough, then that will beat the mistake into thin air, like it never happened.  We all know that doesn’t work, but we certainly give it the “old college try”, don’t we?

“Your best teacher is your last mistake.” -Smart Thinking, twitter

If we change our perspective on our mistakes, we learn a lot from them.  That is certainly a more fruitful thing to do than beating ourselves up into a state of despondency that is doing nothing for us or for the person or persons whom we hurt.  Bottom line, we all make mistakes and errors of judgment.  This is part of our being human.  We need to own our transgressions, apologize soulfully from our hearts and empathize with what it must feel like for the person we hurt, in order to best deal with and move through our mistake. Next, we need to make fair amends where we can, by doing what we can do to compensate for the pain that we caused for another being.  And finally, we need to forgive ourselves and let it go. Whether the other party chooses to forgive us, is up to them and on their own time schedule.  We can still forgive ourselves, though.  Feeling forgiveness, like happiness, is an inside job that we do for ourselves in order to live in a peaceful, emotional state.

When we learn from our mistakes, we can almost change our perspective to see the lessons that they bring to us, as astute gifts of wisdom.  Sometimes the person we have hurt is ourselves, and we must take the very same steps to work through the offense of hurting ourselves, so that we can move on with a clear, peaceful conscience and the wisdom to do better in the future.

“What was your best experience?

Answer:  It was your worst experience.

Why?

Because it was so convincing.” -unknown