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 me, so it was okay that I burned all of his DVDs". Or "My brother is a mooch, so he deserves all the insults I hurl at his lazy butt". Justifications are endless. But they don't take away from the fact that their practice does nothing to hold one accountable, and only creates a moral vacuum. Even the most evil person thinks he has a good reason for what he does, or else he probably wouldn't do it. How many times have you heard a heinous crime being justified because the criminal was insistent that God told the criminal to do it?
So, it's important to let go of the justifications, and instead focus on what harm you did commit, and what you can do to remedy the situation at hand. The basic premise for this is simply to acknowledge to the person where you were at fault, and have some kind of strategy to not engage in that behavior in the future. If you used to lie to your wife, then admit to her that you have done this, and try to tell the truth to her in the future. She probably isn't perfect either, but this isn't your problem. This is key in making amends: someone else's behavior is not your problem. You are only responsible for your own actions. If this means you leave a situation, then you do so with as much dignity as possible. A woman with a cheating husband doesn't have to stay with him. But it doesn't mean burning all his possessions as some parting gift either. No matter what another does, you are still responsible for your own actions. This is what amends are.
There are times in making amends where it may be better to engage in indirect, or what I call proxy amends. I recently ran into this in my own life where I felt if I were honest, I had caused a lot of damage to some people during a particularly rough patch. However, this time was years ago. I found that while I would not mind if I heard from the affected people, contacting them would not be the best solution. I decided that calling or messaging a bunch of people just to reopen old wounds that they healed from, forgot about, or didn't even know happen would be counterintuitive to the idea of cleaning up my side of the street. This kind of situation, where people are no longer in your life because of death or otherwise, probably calls for proxy amends. It does no good to create new wounds just to get your jollies off some weird semblance of amends.
If you decide on the route of proxy amends, get as creative as you want, as long as follow the dictum to do no harm. A good choice, if you a person of any spiritual bent at all, is to pray or meditate with the aggrieved parties in mind. Make a list of those you have harmed, and have others who believe in this sort of thing to pray for them as well. It goes to say that if you think holy thoughts about these people, at the very least it will take some of the venom out of the offense. You could perform service in their names. This could constitute anything you want that would truly benefit other people. Volunteering or some creative artwork would be two examples of this choice.
Another option is changing your behavior in the name of the people you have harmed. An example would be, a man cheated on his ex-wife when they were married, so she divorced him. Instead of unloading all his guilt on his ex-wife with salacious details and calling it “making amends”, when this man remarries, he can remedy the situation by being a faithful husband to his new wife. His second wife will benefit, and his ex-wife, if she is in his life, will benefit by seeing that at least he has put the work into become a better man.
The point is, what it is to make amends is to try to make things right again. No one can change the past with all its details, but you can use your darker experiences to become a better person now. Making amends means you make a conscious decision to be accountable for your actions without any excuse for bad behavior. And don't worry if you can't contact people you have harmed. Perform indirect amends in their names, and at least in your heart you know have you made some gesture to making a situation right. There is a key phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous' eighth step: “became willing to make amends”. As long as in more difficult situations where direct contact is inadvisable, you can honestly say in your heart that if the circumstances were ideal you would make direct amends to your aggrieved friends, then you are on the right track. It is only when you want to hide your offenses under the rug of rationalization that you need to reassess your choice to delay direct amends.
If you are choosing to make amends to people in your life, this is a challenging task. But it will be worth it to know you have done what you could to make things right. Talk to people who can be supportive of you during this process, don't forget to enjoy the day, and just do what you reasonably can. Good luck, and I hope it works out well for you.