don't bother with the flowers

It's a classic move for a guy to buy flowers for the girlfriend he's wronged in some way.

To be fair, it's a nice gesture.
At the very least it admits some regret (a friend of mine loves the line "I'm sorry...that we fought.")

But I think what somehow gets forgotten is that the flowers are just a symbol - the real power in the gesture is the meaning behind it - a promise to change, to try to be better, to agree to work towards a common goal. Without this promise, why bother getting the flowers?

A similar situation: forgiveness. A friend of mine put it beautifully when he said: "When I say I forgive you, it means I surrender my right to ever speak of this again, even if I want to". The words mean nothing unless you back them up with your actions, with your promise to set the issue aside forever.

The same goes for "I'm sorry". We get so conditioned into auto-apologizing that we forget to actually consider what it is that we're sorry for. Do we realize what we did wrong, and are we sorry for that? Or are we sorry we got caught? Or are we sorry that the other person got mad?

I so often find myself making elaborate gestures or rattling off words, just because I know that's what I'm expected to do. But imagine if we could actually live up to the meaning of those words and actions - think about it - would you rather get flowers (or Yankees tickets? hahaha), or truly resolve a conflict?