Several sorts of reactions emerge when we say or do things in our daily interactions with people. Some of those reactions may be receptive to whatever we said or did, but some reactions will come from people who find our words or actions to be offensive.
I care about the words I say and I pay special attention to my actions towards people. When I notice that people are going bonkers because they feel offended by my words or action, I'm always willing to say "I'm sorry about..." and I genuinely don't hesitate to apologize whenever I shat the bed.
However, I'm someone who doesn't take my words lightly. If I'm saying "Hey, I'm sorry". I say it because I understand what I did wrong. I say it because I'm genuinely sorry for doing or saying whatever got you offended. Also, I make sure I won't be doing that offensive stuff again. That's the pattern that my apology follows.
In situations where someone or people are offended because of what I said or did and it turns out that I'm wrong about that, it has become too late to take back the words or action, but I know I can say that I'm sorry and I will mean every word of it.
However, there are circumstances where people feel offended by what I've said or did and it turns out that I've done nothing wrong. In such cases, getting an apology out of me is nearly impossible.
An incident that generally manifests this is a seminar which I was invited to in January 2022. It was a seminar organized for youths in the Catholic Deanery of Ibadan. I've only lived in Ibadan for 4 months when I got the invite to come appear as one of the speakers and give a talk about Cryptocurrency and Content Creation as a whole. Some of the organizers knew I was all about that area of life and I honored the invitation.
On the D-Day, we had up to a hundred youths in attendance and when I spoke about Cryptocurrency and Content Creation, a lot of them showed interest. This was also the season when University students were on strike and a lot of them needed money. I got close to 30 people who particularly saw this as an opportunity to grow.
I did beyond what I was meant to do and carved out time to teach them for as long as necessary. They had access to my Discord and were free to come ask questions about anything and everything related to Content Creation on Hive. I ran out of HP delegations, and even had to get some of my friends on Hive to support them with HP. For the record, this was before RC delegation became a thing.
After a few weeks, I noticed that some of them just opened the account, made their introductory post, and bummed off. Some were too lazy to come up with a decent blog post. Just a bunch of low-effort posts. Trust me, I know what I mean by "low-effort posts".
At some point, some of their actions started drawing the sort of attention that I didn't enjoy. So, I had to make a move to see what on earth was going on. I managed to organize a physical meetup with them so I can be looking them in the eyes when we converse. During the meeting, I asked when they choose to run their account the way they do.
The whole response from them generally translates into;
I don't get a good vote.
I don't have enough data to spend time engaging in people's posts.
I don't know how to write.
I am always busy.
That's fair enough. However, some people have it worse and they are still doing the work. They make a genuine effort and they do it consistently until things start to click. I told them that I was not pleased with their action and showed each of them what they were doing wrong. I didn't care about sugarcoating words right there and some of them didn't enjoy that conversation.
Well, those who allowed themselves to be corrected learned and improved. However, those who were more interested in getting told that they were doing just fine even when they were getting it wrong ended up feeling the repercussions.
I wasn't and have never been one to spend time on something or someone who takes it for granted. Also, I have no apologies for calling someone out when he/she messes up.
Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop or Comma.
Thumbnail Image is taken from Unsplash
