It’s never too late to apologize.
We were discussing the importance of apologizing when a practitioner told me of one apology he made many years before.
When he was ten years old, an older relative invited him to see some books. While looking around the shelves, the young boy took a comic. As he grew from a boy to a teenager to a man, he replayed that moment over and over. Ten years ago, he met the daughter of that older relative for the first time in forty years.
And he admitted his theft.
I can only imagine the lifting of the weight of guilt his admission brought about. Apologizing can be breathtaking. Only after we apologize can we appreciate the weight of guilt we had been carrying. Will the intense feeling of relief last forever? No. It will likely only linger a few hours, days if we are lucky.
But the memory of our relief will remain. Maybe we won’t remember exactly what it felt like, but we will not forget how great it was. How relieved, how happy, we had felt. That memory can spur us to apologize again. And again.