"I'm Sorry"

Such simple words, "I'm sorry."  Somehow, this phrase has become such a common saying in my life that I even still remember how to say it in Spanish from my two semesters of the language back in ninth grade.  Quick aside, the only other phrases I remember are, "Where's the Bathroom?" and, "Hi, what's up?"

Why has this phrase become so common?  I'm sure at some point it was supposed to be something weighty, something difficult to say for one reason or another.  There are plenty of TV shows and movies from when I was a kid showing people having trouble saying Sorry, or outright refusing for one reason or another.  Heck, I remember as a kid I hated to be told that I had to say Sorry, and I would often get angry and leave if my parents told me I had to instead of just saying Sorry.

Yesterday I told my wife sorry because I walked in the door when I said I was going to, which just so happened to be a half an hour later than usual.  Please note that I had already told her well in advance that I was going to be late, and I apologized then as well.  I also apologized when I was telling her that I'd be late for making her have to pick up the baby from daycare because I was going to be late.  Then, withing 30 seconds of walking in the house, I once again said sorry because I hadn't washed the baby bottles by the time we were expecting guests, which was also caused by my being late.

All told, I apologized four different times (minimum, it's possible I said it a few more times), basically all for the same reason.  In retrospect, I'm guessing my wife brushed all those apologies aside like they meant next to nothing, which, honestly, they did.  This brings me to my point: if "I'm sorry" is such a meaningless phrase, why did I waste my time and energy saying it four times yesterday about the same event, and why is that not an uncommon thing, not just for me, but for a lot of people I know?

I've been listening to the One Free Family Podcast basically since it aired.  I think possibly in the very first episode (but I can't quite remember because there have been so many and none of the titles say anything about it), Taylor and James discuss manners, and "I'm Sorry" in particular.  They straight up say that they don't make their children say "I'm sorry" for any reason, and if an apology is warranted and their child won't say it, they will make the apology for their child.  I think maybe this is part of the problem with "I'm sorry": many children (myself included) were (and still are) forced to say "I'm sorry" all the time by their parents.  Some situations might actually need an apology, i.e., if my son kicks another kid, knocks that kid down, and steals a toy.  However, if that happens and I force my child to say "I'm sorry," all I'm doing is cheapening the apology.  My son knows that he doesn't mean it, and the child receiving the apology knows it's a meaningless one.  Eventually, this happens often enough that we all just start to believe "I'm sorry" is a fairly benign, mostly meaningless phrase.

Now, I don't want to lay all the blame on parents.  For starters, parents aren't the only ones that force children to apologize; there are plenty of other adults in the lives of every child that can and often do require apologies even when children don't wish to give them, like Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, family friends, and even teachers.  I also don't believe that forcing apologies is the only reason for the cheapening of the phrase.  I believe there's been a movement recently in our culture to cheapen a lot of our language, but that's a topic for another time.

According to Dictionary.com, an apology is defined as, "a written or spoken expression of one's regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another."  Thus, in order for an apology to be meaningful, it must be an expression of regret, remorse, or sorrow.  Of the four times I said, "I'm sorry," yesterday, I maybe once felt any regret.  After actually having the feeling, one must apologize for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another, thus making any apology without an actual cause meaningless as well.  Thus an apology for showing up when I said I would is meaningless because I have not insulted or wronged my wife in any way, nor have I failed to show up when I committed to.  Finally, I would add that an apology has to come with some expectation that the party in the wrong is expected to not take the action that caused the insult or injury again in the future.  I can certainly say that neither I nor Megan actually believe that I won't stay late at work again some time in the future.

I've been working to be more deliberate in my life lately, and I've been exploring these thoughts on recent posts so I can expound upon them openly and share my intuitions with others who might care to read them.  Apologies should have meaning, and I'm not happy about the way that I abuse the words "I'm sorry."  In an effort to be more deliberate in what I say, do, and think, I will be working to stop apologizing when I don't truly mean it, or when an apology is not warranted.  I want my son to understand that an apology is a phrase that should have weight, and if I cannot model that behavior, then he won't learn the right lessons.

Gift Giving

Last week I had been intending to write this post about gift giving, but instead I read John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down, and was so inspired I had to write about that instead.  Check it out here.

Either way, I do really want to discuss this topic as it's been eating at me for a month or so now, maybe more.

This year was our first Christmas with our son, and because of that it was a big deal for a lot of reasons.  I could get into all the reasons why it's a big deal that we actually have a child to celebrate Christmas with, but I feel as if I've likely discussed that elsewhere.  If not, that's a post for another time.  At any rate, with a four month old at home, Christmas felt a lot different this year than we're used to.

For starters, can I just say that decorating a house with an infant to take care of is next to impossible.  I barely got the tree up the first night before he became inconsolable and we had to take turns holding him for the rest of the night, which really hampered our ability to do more than put ornaments on the tree.  The next night we finished the mantle and I put up a decoration on the front door and put out two candlestick lights from my grandmother's house, then the baby started crying again and not much more got done.  There was a wreath that ended up dying in the box because I was never able to hang it.  There were colored light bulbs for my garage and street lamps.  There were strands of lights for the windows, and other decorations for the house that all never saw the light of day this year because it just became too difficult to devote time to dealing with them.  Frankly, now I'm just concerned about taking down the few things I did get put up as I don't really have tons of time to deal with that on top of everything else.

The big thing, though, is the gift giving.  This could easily have been an "Arguing with my Wife" segment, but I want to expand beyond just what Megan and I disagreed about here.  I'll start there, though, as that's really what got me started on this path this year.  Our child is four months old, almost to the day when Christmas rolled around, and barely capable of sitting up on his own.  He does not understand the idea of gifts.  He cannot open presents.  He wasn't even interested in trying to help.  I couldn't get him to grab the wrapping paper or anything.  We knew this as early as 12/15 when I had to unwrap all the gifts that were given to him at my father's family Christmas party.

Why do I bring this all up?  Simple: I didn't think it was necessary to get him any gifts at all this year.  Megan felt it was important, and, frankly, if that was the whole argument, I wasn't going to take away her Christmas cheer.  This is her favorite holiday, and she really wanted to get him gifts, so we found some Dr. Seuss books and a couple of cute outfits and I was ready to call it quits.  Then she found a stuffed animal (more on these later), and some teething toys (which, admittedly, he is starting to need), and more books, and frankly I'm pretty sure we went way overboard.  I mean, I easily spent $100 on gifts for a four month old child who will literally not remember any of them.  Maybe he'll still have the Dr. Seuss books when he starts to read...

Anyhow, to add fuel to our argument, Megan individually wrapped every item.  For any other child, if I bought them four books and two outfits, they might get two boxes, but for our child, we had to wrap each book separately, and box each outfit separately, etc.  There were probably 10-12 gifts under the tree for him, and we had to unwrap each and every one on Christmas morning.  Now, don't get me wrong, Megan really enjoyed the entire experience and that makes it worth it, but it does seem a little ridiculous to me when I think about it.

This whole argument Megan and I were having through most of December really got me thinking about the entire idea of gift giving.  You see, I have three sisters, and three step sisters, and between the six of them, they have seven children.  Megan has two younger brothers who have yet to get to that stage in their lives, but two years ago she was finally contacted by her older half brother that she had never known growing up, and it turns out he has two children.  Those two celebrate Hanukkah instead of Christmas, but that fact doesn't really detract from my point.  You see, between the two of us, not counting our own child, we have nine children that all celebrate some gift giving holiday in December.  On top of that, there's a ton of birthdays in December and January.  Megan and all of her brothers are born in January or December.  We have two nieces with birthdays in December, as well as a niece and a nephew in January.  Not to mention cousins (a lot of Megan's family is born in January).  If I count November and February, I pull in a few more as well as I have two sisters in November and another nephew and step father in February.  On top of this we have close friends, coworkers, etc, not to mention parents and each other to think about.

It all gets really out of control when I also take into account that we have the family gather with my father's side of the family in the middle of the month, then Christmas Eve with my mother's side of the family, and Christmas day with Megan's family.  Each of these gatherings require that we supply some kind of food, drink, dessert, etc, and both of my family's gatherings come with extra gift giving in the forms of Reindeer Games, White Elephant, and Secret Santa.  Plus, Megan and I wanted to do special Christmas cards this year since having a baby is kind of a big deal and what better way is there to show off to everyone than to send out a Christmas card with his face in it.  I literally could not keep track of the amount of money we spent on Christmas gifts and related expenses, but I can say that we had a Christmas Club account that was certainly not enough to cover this year.

After the difficulties I had with the whole getting a bunch of gifts for a four month old, I then had to go through and figure out what kinds of gifts to get for all of the above named, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't stressful.  For starters, I'm not really a huge fan of spending money, so anything that requires I go out and spend money stresses me out.  More importantly, though, is by the time we were getting near the end, the whole ordeal was just starting to feel really forced.  I mean, let's go back to the niece and nephew that celebrate Hanukkah.  I don't know much of anything about Hanukkah, and I've never actually met either of those children as they live on the other side of the country.  Had we stayed in California, we probably would have met them by now; as it stands, we will likely finally meet them in 2019.  I've had a few video calls with them, but I don't really know much of anything about them other than what I hear from Megan's mom (she's spent some time there and talks to them frequently).  I certainly don't know the kinds of things they're into that would inform good gift decisions, so shopping for them on Amazon (yay free shipping to any destination!) just felt like an odd, detached experience for me.  Worse is the fact that, I don't even really know if they received the gifts, liked them, or anything.  The whole experience bothered me.

That was only the beginning of my woes, though.  I usually like to give books as gifts, but two of the parents this year specifically told me that books would not make good gifts for their children this year as said children "hate" reading now.  I could (and may at some point) go on a rant about school making all of these kids that loved reading two years ago hate it now, but I won't right now.  It did mean that we had to come up with other ideas for gifts.  I don't spend as much time as I probably should as an uncle with my nieces and nephews, so other than Five Nights at Freddy's and Minecraft, I don't really know much that would inform good gift decisions.  Toys are really commercialized now (literally every entertainment brand has toys associated with it), and it all feels fake and a bit disgusting.  I wanted to buy one nephew Legos, but holy cow when did they get so expensive, and do I buy him Marvel, or DC, or Minecraft, or just Lego Creator?  What happened to a big box of a bunch of different Lego blocks and kids just had to be creative and not follow instructions to build the one thing their $10 box of Legos will make?  (FYI, I did find a box like this, but its 2000 pieces cost a small fortune, so I had to pass.)

By the time we were looking for a gift for my niece's birthday on 12/26, I was burnt out on gift giving.  The whole idea was feeling forced, and I hated it.

When we were living in California, while we were out and about, if I saw something that reminded me of any of my nieces or nephews and I had the cash, I'd pick it up and send it home for them.  It felt good getting a call from my sister that her daughter loved the new shirt I bought for her, or my other sister that her son wishes he could have been at the Renaissance Faire with us when we bought the puzzle box we sent home for him.  I didn't feel obligated to send home a ton of gifts for Christmas, and, frankly, we couldn't have afforded it then anyhow.  I didn't feel bad if I couldn't do more than send a card for a birthday, because if I saw something at any point that I could get and send home, I would and did.  That felt right in a way that all the gifts I gave this year for Christmas didn't.

This year I felt obligated to get each and every child a gift for Christmas.  More than that, I felt confined by the fact that I had to spend an equal amount on each child else one of my sisters might get upset that some child received better gifts than others.  I only even bring that up because that has happened to me in the past already. Once, I bought a gift for my niece and sent it home from CA only to get a call complaining that I didn't send one home for said child's brother as well.  Another time one sister complained loudly that I had played favorites with another sister's daughter and spent a lot more money on her than any of the other children.  It's disgusting to think about, honestly, but here I am, hamstrung by the fact that it's expected of me as an uncle to get each child a gift, and I have to play it safe and spend the same amount on each child or one sister might be upset that her kids got the short end of the stick.  I didn't enjoy the experience at all.  To make things worse, since we're all together on Christmas Eve at my mother's house, all the kids opened up all their gifts that night in a huge free-for-all that ended with me not getting to see any of those gifts that I had stressed over choosing opened or how any of the kids reacted to them.  Frankly, I'm not sure that kids can really react to any one particular gift, anyhow, when they have 10-20 gifts in front of them to open.

One of my coworkers told me the story of how last year she went all out with her daughter because she was finally old enough to understand Christmas and open the presents herself and really have fun with it, so she had like 20-25 gifts under the tree for her daughter on Christmas morning.  The poor girl opened three or four, then turned to her mother and said, "I'm done opening presents now mom.  I wanna go play with my new toys.  This is boring."  I couldn't have said it better myself.

I know the point of this season is gift giving, but I guess I didn't get it this year.  I didn't feel generous for giving any of those gifts this year.  I doubt highly that any of my nieces or nephews felt particularly grateful for any of the gifts they received, especially from me.  Most of the gifts I gave I'm guessing will be forgotten shortly if they haven't already.  I don't get it anymore, and I didn't like it this year at all.

More to follow on this.  I need to collect myself and try to be a bit more coherent with the rest of my ideas before I try to continue.