Someone hurts you. Someone does you wrong. No doubt about it. They were wrong. So what do you do? You start holding a grudge. You feel bitter and rehearse their hurt and nurse your wound. You feel superior. You refuse to forgive. Your inner ecology begins to change; your inner climate warms in some ways and cools in others. And slowly, evil gets its hooks in you; you’re becoming a worse person than you were before. Outwardly, everything’s OK and nobody notices. But inwardly, the metal of your character is rusting. The wood of your personality is rotting and termites are tunnelling. Slowly, subtly, something in your inner being is being weakened.
But then through the regular practice of self-examination and confession you do an internal home inspection. You realise what’s happening and you express regret. What the other person did was indeed hurtful, but your response to the wound has also been unwise: rather than disinfecting the wound, you’ve been careless and allowed it to become infected. The wound wasn’t your fault, but the infection is.
The simple word Sorry opens the way for you to interrupt and reverse the moral decay underway within you.