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You’ve heard the phrase a million times: It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
In general, I have found that to be true. You usually are better off saying sorry for something than asking in advance… but I am going to make the case for why that is a bad thing, at least in my life, anyway.
Somebody said that to me about a year ago during a trip to Buffalo Wild Wings. I met up with a few friends for a rowdy evening of watching sports and eating wings. They weren’t sober friends, so some of the people were drinking, too. I told my wife that I thought I’d be gone till the end of a specific football game, which was likely to be over at about 7:15. So I said I would be home by 7:30 or so.
But as the evening went on, I was having a great time hanging out, and I mentioned that I had told my wife that I was leaving at the end of the game. One friend immediately said, “Tell her it went to double overtime.”
I shook my head and said, “I don’t want to lie to her, so I can’t do that. Plus, there is no double overtime in the NFL. So your suggestion sucks on multiple levels.”
Then he said, “Why don’t you just stay a little longer and apologize when you get home? It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
I thought long and hard about that, or maybe blaming traffic, or something other than the most reasonable and easiest solution, which was: Ask directly if staying late would be an issue. I did end up thinking, “Maybe I’ll just say ‘Oopsie’ when I get home and hope for the best.”
Except… I can’t start doing that. The “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” thing is basically lying, in my humble opinion. It’s doing something sketchy and knowing that I am doing something sketchy, but strategizing the best possible way to get away with it.
The problem with an addict like me is that I have to have firm guardrails around anything that drags me back into being full of s**t. I can’t lie. I can’t cheat. I can’t steal. But I also can’t work angles on people. I can’t manipulate. I can’t tell the truth but not the whole truth. I have to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. I have to just be truthful, through and through. I can’t pretend I didn’t know something might be a problem and then just say sorry.
So I ultimately decided to text my wife and say I was having a good time and would like to stay. She was of course fine with that and appreciated the communication, and I stuck around and had a good old time with my friends.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
Heard at meetings
"When I was drinking I drank to celebrate things that hadn't happened yet."
(Credit: Grapevine, August 2009, by Kay K. of Redondo Beach, California)
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