Love Is Never Having To Say You Are Sorry:

A Timist View

A reality exists in that all goods and services require time to acquire. If a possession is stolen, then the time it took the victim to acquire and maintain the possession is also stolen. If a thief were to repent for the robbery of an item, he would also need to repent for the time that the owner lost in acquiring and maintaining that item.

In a similar manner, if a person takes the time to build respect for himself but does not receive his due respect, then he is also being robbed of the time he invested in creating that respect. One repentant for showing disrespect would also need to repent for disregarding the time that individual spent in developing his position of respect. Most people do not show respect for the simple reason that they lack the time or integrity to fulfill the meaning and origin of respect, that is, "re-inspect" so as to not over- or under-respect. In the end, echoing the morality of Ganhdi and King, the disrespecter ultimately takes more from himself than from his victims, for the villian loses more time from the disrespect he deserves. 

In speaking of sorrow, one can only be truly sorry if they repent for the time stolen from an individual. When a person says, “I am sorry,” he is referencing a personal misdeed that cost another person some time. In other words, being sorry can be quantified in time. That being established, if one were to show true repentance for a transgression, he would repay the infraction of time lost with 100% interest; i.e., If I steal 10 hours of your time, I would show true sorrow if I repaid you with 20 hours of time. This is the basis of our judicial system, with fines and restitutions being a part of the punishment. Monetary fines are paid in currency, a word that derived from "What is your time currently worth?"

Consider also the country of Japan, the land of hari-kari and seppuku. Here, the ultimate way of showing that one is sorry for his failures is to commit suicide. What is suicide but the destroying of one’s own time? The idea here is that if an individual can not give enough time to repay a crime, then he should self-euthanize. (If this were the law of the land, individuals would think twice before stealing or showing disrespect.)

Thus, if one understands the qualification of time in determining the degree of being sorry, one can understand the adage: “Love is never having to say you are sorry.”

The word friend comes from the old English word for “free,“ freo. A person who helped find freedom from time-wasting problems was called a “freeing person” or friend. The superlative of freo was freon, which meant “love.”. These Anglo semantics are found elsewhere, e.g., in German, free is frei and friend is freund. While feelings among friends can vary with the changing circumstances in one’s daily life, true love for another does not change or fade. The essence and proof of claiming that you love another is how much time you are willing to give to the other person. Consider, for example, a mother’s love. A mother will give an unending and unqualified amount of time to her child.

Love, like sorrow, can be quantified in time. Sadly, given the parallel of time is money and money is time, too many people use the word love like a worthless check drawn on an empty emotional bank account. Do you write bad checks to buy love you do not deserve? 

Thus, if one understands that to be truly sorry, one must give time in repayment of a transgression, and if one understands that love is a giving of endless unqualified time, then logically there is no need to say you are sorry to one that you love. Such an apology would be an offer to give the loved one a repayment in time when you are already committed to giving all of your time.

The best morality is a morality that rests on practical, logical facts. Otherwise, morality is merely a battle of opinions, emotions and gut reactions. Illogical, impractical morality is sunnyday morality: The holder abdicates on dismal days because the holder does not see the long-term calculus of logical, practical morality. The best morality if one that can withstand the scrutiny of shared experience. Timism is the morality of more time.