December 6, 2025
Every now and then the Thought of the Day and Question of the Day pair up like two strangers who unexpectedly sit next to each other on a plane and realize they’re basically flying to the same destination. Today’s reflection does exactly that. This post dives into both the Thought of the Day and Question of the Day, exploring the strange relationship between apology, self-awareness, aging, and the things we grow to crave without even noticing it happen.
Thought of the Day: To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense. Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce does not exactly give Hallmark energy. He drops a line like this and just walks away, leaving you holding your apology like a hot potato, wondering what to do with it.
On the surface, this Thought of the Day feels a little cynical. Apologizing is supposed to be noble. Mature. Healthy. It’s the thing we try to model for our kids when they bulldoze their siblings at 6 in the morning because apparently the day cannot begin unless someone is crying.
But Bierce is poking at something uncomfortable. When we apologize, we acknowledge we’re capable of messing up. And not only capable, but likely to do it again. Human repeat offenders. Frequent fliers on Flight Oops.
An apology is not a clean slate. It’s a promise stitched to the quiet hope that next time, maybe we’ll notice the cliff before we tumble off it. But real life is messy. Patterns repeat. Kids spill juice. Adults snap too quickly. We say we’re sorry, then trip over the same rock on the path tomorrow.
So yes, an apology is foundation. But maybe it’s not foundation for the offense. Maybe it’s foundation for the relationship. For rebuilding. For the chance to try again. Like I wrote about in the post where I revisited how expectations quietly shape our reactions, we don’t grow because we suddenly get flawless. We grow because we become aware. We learn our edges. We learn where we still have work to do. Apology is humble construction. Not demolition.
And if Bierce thinks that means we’ll mess up again, he’s right. We just hope that when we do, we’re messing up a little less violently than last time.
Question of the Day: What is something you once hated, but now crave?
My answer is silence.
When I was younger, silence was suspicious. If things were quiet, I wanted the TV on. If the TV wasn’t on, I’d turn on music. If music wasn’t working, I’d settle for the hum of anything: a fan, a dishwasher, a random radio station playing static and sadness. Silence felt like standing alone in a parking lot at night. Something about it needed filling.
As a kid, doing homework required noise. Reading required noise. Being alone required noise. Silence was too honest, too revealing. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough, or thinking enough, or being enough. So I stuffed sound into every corner of my day.
Now? Silence feels like a luxury suite I didn’t earn but somehow got upgraded into.
Waking up before dawn, when the house is still and the world hasn’t started making demands, is one of the best parts of my day. The coffee tastes better. My thoughts run straighter. Even the dog seems to walk softer out of respect for the vibe.
Silence used to irritate me. Now I look for it the way I used to look for the remote. When I find it, I guard it. I settle into it. I breathe differently inside of it. And sometimes, when the kids are asleep and the house isn’t vibrating with requests, questions, or the sound of someone dropping something ceramic for no reason at all, I just sit there. No guilt, no noise, no rush.
It reminds me of the post where I wrote about how the anticipation of noise can be worse than the noise itself, because now I realize the anticipation of peace might be better than the peace itself. Silence gives me a small window where the world doesn’t want anything. And in that moment, I get to choose who I’m becoming.
If you had told 12-year-old me that I’d one day crave silence more than television, cereal, or whatever passed for late-night entertainment at the time, I would have laughed. But growing up sneaks in like that. One day you wake up and realize you’re not the same person who needed everything turned on just to feel alive.
Sometimes I crave silence so much that it reminds me of the post where I admitted how easily overwhelm creeps up on me, because silence isn’t just quiet. It’s recovery. It’s the reset button we don’t always realize we need until life gets too loud again.
Silence isn’t empty. Silence is full. Full of all the things we’ve been thinking but haven’t had the space to hear.
Call to Action
What about you? What’s something you once hated, but now can’t imagine your life without?
Drop your answer in the comments or join the daily email to get each new Thought of the Day and Question of the Day delivered straight to you.
Leave a Reply