“It’s permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn’t do, pitiful, beautiful human.”Few things in life are more painful than seeing ourselves act in ways orthogonal to our own values, watching helplessly as the consequences of those actions ripple out and hurt others, jolting us awake from the dream of perfection. Even the saints among us are vulnerable to this fundamental fallibility, for the measure of our humanity may be the distance, and the aching awareness of the distance, between our ideal selves and our real selves.Illustration by Sigmund Freud’s niece named Tom from the 1922 philosophical children’s book David the Dreamer.In the wake of it, after the futile wish for an undo button has burned itself out, we find in its ashes one thing only: Trembling with desire for forgiveness and self-forgiveness, we long for an apology so vast and powerful as to subsume the irreversibility of time — an apology grand enough to allay all the vulnerabilities of being human, fallible, and famished for connection. That longing comes alive in this consolation of a poem by Ellen Bass:HOW TO APOLOGIZEby Ellen BassCook a large fish — choose one with many bones, a skeletonyou will need skill to expose, maybe the flyingsilver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumblingthe others into oblivion. If you don’t livenear a lake, you’ll have to travel.Walking is best and shows you mean it,but you could take a train and let yourselfbe soothed by the rockingon the rails. It’s permittedto receive solace for whatever you didor didn’t do, pitiful, beautifulhuman. When my mother was in the hospital,my daughter and I had to clear out the homeshe wouldn’t return to. Then she recoveredand asked, incredulous,How could you have thrown out all my shoes?So you’ll need a boat. You could rent or buy,but, for the sake of repairing the world,build your own. Thin stripsof Western red cedar are perfect,but don’t cut a tree. There’ll bea demolished barn or downed trunkif you venture further.And someone will have a mill.And someone will loan you tools.The perfume of sawdust and the curlsthat fall from your planewill sweeten the hours. Each nightwe dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one nightwe could dream back everything lost.So grill the pale flesh.Unharness yourself from your weary stories.Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.There is much to fear as a creaturecaught in time, but thisis safe. You need no defense. Thisis just another way to knowyou are alive.Couple with Maimonides’s framework of repentance, repair, and what true forgiveness takes, then revisit Ellen Bass’s perspectival poem “The Big Picture.”“How to Apologize” originally appeared in The New Yorker and is published here with the poet’s permission.donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.