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I'm sorry. But I'm not.

Tonight it's Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement for us jews. This day is for us to repent our sins and ask G-d for forgiveness if we've done something wrong this year, which we all have even if you think you're perfect. One thing we are also suppose to do is to ask the people around us for forgiveness which leads to a bunch of Facebook statuses and text messages saying "I'm sorry if I've done something to upset you this year". I tend to ignore these messages for one reason; If you don't know what you have done, why the hell are you apologising for it?
As a child I was taught that if you say you're sorry you should mean it and by meaning it you're not planning on doing it again. This mentality then creates an issue with apologising collectively because you don't actually know what you have done wrong which means that you're not going to change it, not because you don't want to but because you simply don't know that it is upsetting someone. I'm not blaming anyone for it because sometimes we are actually completely unaware that we are doing something wrong and therefore it gets difficult to be able apologise to the right people and that way maybe it is good to at least see that the person knows he/she is doing something wrong. But then again in most cases we are fully aware of hurting someone but we are too stubborn to apologise.
Telling someone that you're sorry is a hard thing to do. We've all been there where we've done something to upset someone but haven't known what to do to make it right. From experience I've noticed that sometimes just admitting that you've done something wrong will be enough. It shows the other person that you are aware of the mistake and that you want to do something about it.
It also doesn't matter if you apologise right before Yom Kipur because you think that will make G-d forgive you. If you believe in God you should know that God watches us all the time and therefore you should try to change something you've done wrong anytime during the year.
I think the most important lesson we can learn at this time of the year is that we all make mistakes and it's important to learn from them. Sometimes these mistakes means hurting someone else, that doesn't make us bad people and it definitely doesn't mean we can't change. I would rather say it's the opposite, it gives us a change to improve as human beings which we should do everyday anyway. We need to learn to give people a second chance, leave the grudges behind and actually mean it when we say that we're sorry.
So for Yom Kippur I'm not going to tell you all that I am sorry if I've hurt you. I'm fully aware of that I might have hurt some of you and that I have missed it completely but I also know I've hurt people and to them I will apologise personally because that is the only way they'll know that I care. And to the people that have hurt me, you don't need to worry, I don't like holding grudges but only apologise if you are actually planning on changing it.
I wish everyone who is Jewish a G'mar Chatima Tova and an easy fast. May your next year be filled with new experiences and improvement because that's the only way to know if we learn from our mistakes or.

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