by Jessica Kuzmier

Created on: July 13, 2010

Let's face it; no one in the world is perfect.  Everyone makes mistakes.  But in an interconnected world, what one person does affects another.  If you knocked a glass on the floor, you would clean up your mistake so no one gets cut by the glass.  This is what amends are.  You clean up your mess, so no one else gets hurt by the mistake.

Most religious traditions advocate the premise of cleaning up your side of the street.  It makes sense; if you are practicing love for your neighbor, you should care about how you have impacted him or her.  If you have created offense, it is best to rectify the situation the best you can.   Most people who have recovered from addictions are familiar with the dictate to make amends from Alcoholics Anonymous, which deals with making amends in the eighth and ninth step of its Twelve Step program: the eighth step: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all” (Step 8), and the ninth step: “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others”(Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd edition, p. 59).

The key to all of this is to be willing to make direct amends.  It really does no good to call up a bunch of people and dump your garbage on them just to relieve yourself of guilt.  If you are trying to clean up your side of the street, you need to change your behavior to show that whatever it is that you did wrong is something you truly regret doing.  This takes more work than hunting people down on Facebook and dumping your guts on them and then heading for the hills.  

So, how do you make amends to people you have harmed?  As the steps imply, there are direct amends and indirect amends.  Direct amends work best when you are still in contact with those people whom you have harmed.  Examples of this may be, for years you lied to your wife about how much money you spent betting horses, and she is still married to you.  You insulted your co-worker, and you still work with him.  If the current people in your life have been affected your bad behavior, you need to help lighten their burden by showing that you are no longer the person who did the offense, and are willing to be accountable for what you did in the past.

This can be hard, because it's easy to justify one's actions as being less offensive than they are.  Examples: "My husband cheated on

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