From youth to retirement and in between as we have raised our family and dealt with business issues and careers I’m sure most of us have tried to be upstanding citizens. I’m sure there are many times that we are proud of, but anyone that has successfully reached their senior years has also had a few moments and relationships that they aren’t very proud of also. We are only human and I’m sure many have faced a lot of hard times in life. 

The older I get the more I think about all the hurt I may have caused others in my life and have come to realize that the hardest words to say in this earthly language for myself and many others is “I’m Sorry.” Pride really is a waste of time, but you don’t realize that sometimes till it’s to late. No one ever likes to admit that they were wrong about anything. That is one of the hardest things to ever acknowledge.

Chances are that by this stage in your life, you can look back and think of times when you did treat someone very badly. Maybe you were in the wrong and weren’t honest or ethical or moral in some aspect of life. Sometimes when we’re in the midst of a stressful trying experience in our life we may find it easier to get past the shameful way we behaved by burying it in the back of our mind and let the passage of time wipe away the memory. 

Our senior years aren’t just about trips to casinos and sleeping until noon. We also go through a period of reviewing our life and celebrating the joys and successes we’ve had and shared.  In being honest with ourself, we can’t just rejoice in the good, we also have to review the times when we were the one doing wrong and how our actions hurt and damaged other people in our life.

This is hard to think about but as a mature senior adult, now is the time to decide if you are going to make that situation right or not. We want to face our senior years with a happy heart and a mind that is peaceful so to do that we need to make sure our affairs are in order. Many older people that I have known in my lifetime have tried to make amends.

I’m not sure if they are afraid of what is on the otherside or they don’t want to go to the grave knowing they didn’t do all they could to be the quality person they set out to be until they do what they can to fix the things that they broke as well. In many cases, all that we have to do to resolve a mistake we made or to fix a broken relationship is to be prepared to say the two hardest words there are in the English language.  And those words are – I’m sorry.