Sorry, Tiger

One thing I dislike even more than Tiger Woods expounding on the meaning of integrity?  Forced apologies.  I’m not saying Tiger was forced.  But I know when my son apologized for calling his sister an Idiotic Brat yesterday, he wasn’t sorry.  Not yet anyway.

I’m sure it is possible to think you are agonizingly sorry in just 45 days.  To be so full of regret and embarrassment that you actually think you feel as deeply hurt as those you’ve bulldozed with your behavior.  I’m sure when the mom across the playground finds out her son just left a nasty trail of spit down the middle of the slide, she’s embarrassed.  But when he’s still over there snickering at the kid who didn’t see it in time, should he have to go right away and apologize?

The concept of a genuine apology seems to be disappearing, and I’m not so sure it’s solely the fault of politicians.  We seem, inadvertently, to encourage a disconnect between what we say and what we feel.  “Good game,” the phrase used by kids across the country every Saturday, has become an Instant Rice imitation of the real thing.  We admire sportsmanship, we know it when we see it, so we all try to copy it by making kids line up and chant “good game, good game, good game” down the line.  We want to teach our children to show love and kindness, even if they’re fuming over a loss.  Maybe we’re hoping that if they show it, they’ll feel it too.  The problem with these verbal shortcuts is that no one is forced to make the emotional connection.  We can just mouth the words everyone else is using and move on with how we really feel.

One of the few times in my life when I did something I’m sure was right, I wrote an apology to someone I had truly devastated.  After crying over the first draft, I wrote a newer, better apology and cried some more.  The process continued for a few days, and soon I began to see an underlying pattern.  The apology, while sincere on many levels, was still somehow about me.  Thankfully I never sent any of them, but decided I had reached a point where I couldn’t apologize.  I simply had to change.

Everyone on television was promising me I’d remember where I was when Tiger Woods apologized. I hoped so.  It would’ve been memorable if he had come out and told us all there was nothing he could say.  Not yet anyway.  I wanted him to come out and golf for better or worse and quietly disappear.  I wanted him to take three years before that sought-after interview.  Then we could wait.  We could take the time wondering whether he had changed, and maybe he could talk about it after he really had.  And maybe we could really begin to believe again.

Instead he stole from us the opportunity to hope for him. The chance to wait for something true. Because what we’re all looking for when we turn on that press conference is not to hear an apology.  What we’re yearning to see is whether or not it’s possible for someone to fundamentally become something better.  Because if he can, maybe that means we can too.