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When “sorry” isn’t good enough


A man apologizes for turning his back on true love. A woman apologizes for having an affair with a married man. Someone else apologizes for embezzlement. Yet another apologizes for ever being born.

From the sound of it, you might think these were the players in a group therapy session. Or maybe you’d think these were the stories of Jews on Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance. But you would be mistaken.

These are the voices and stories of people who have left their apologizes on an answering machine to heal themselves. Started by a 20-year-old Vassar student, the apology hotline allows people with guilty consciences to experience some release and get the words out — words that they can’t say in person, words that they can’t say to any other human being when there’s a risk that the other person will speak, write, or call back.

Though some psychiatrists have praised the hotline for giving people who otherwise wouldn’t speak a chance to do so, there are, of course, skeptics. One can’t help but wonder how much closure one really gets by saying something that the person who should hear it never will. By virtue of calling a machine, the repentant’s words are not directed toward the person(s) they’ve hurt. They’re about healing oneself. And though healing oneself may be important — integral even — to moving on and regaining self-confidence, it seems like not saying those words to another human being, or not  writing them down, would preclude any genuine closure. That is, it may provide temporary closure with oneself, but by never confronting the other person, I imagine there would be remnants of repressed guilt potentially forever. For people with depression, that’s only likely to trigger a relapse of the illness.

Even if this isn’t the case, this hotline seems dangerous because it lures callers — people who are potentially suicidal or depressed or whose problems extend far beyond the one incident they’re apologizing for — to call and think, “Well, if I can get up the nerve to call the hotline, I’ll be redeemed for my actions and I won’t really have to confront my fears — i.e., fears that reside in interacting with other human beings.” Others may be suicidal — is it really helpful for them to call a hotline where they speak to a machine, or would it be more beneficial for them to call a hotline where the phone is answered by another person, albeit one the caller doesn’t know? How is the anonymity of the latter any different from the anonymity of the former? In my mind, they’re not all that different. But the person who listens to the apology is more likely to be able to open the caller up, however little, or get them help. The machine can’t do that.

Or can it? I can’t help but wonder about the student who started the hotline, the one who receives all of the messages. Does he listen to them? Apparently.

This poses a couple of problems. First, the fact that he does listen to them deceptively undermines the privacy and solitude of the answering machine. Would you feel more comfortable calling a machine about your failures in life, knowing that someone else was going to be listening to you silently, subconsciously judging you? I don’t think I would …

Second, by providing the false illusion that callers are really just speaking to a machine, what kind of precedent does this set for the way in which we define our relationships to other humans? Suddenly, we don’t have to express our emotions to other human beings. We can just replace them with machines, which serve as our intermediaries.

Third, let’s say the student listens to the messages and a caller says s/he is committing suicide. Given the euthanasia and suicide laws in the United States, does the student then become a conspirator in such a suicide?

This isn’t to degrade the difficulty many people have with apologizing and expressing their true feelings. It’s also not to condemn the innovative student who sought to give sad people a way to cope with their feelings when they’re lonely. But the hotline, it seems, is the easy way out, the quick fix that may not really be much of a fix at all.

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