My daughter asked me why we say 'sorry' for everything. I laughed, then I cried.

My 14 year old, Tola, came back from school last week and asked me why Nigerians say sorry for everything. She said her friend's mum bumped into her at the school gate and said sorry even though it was Tola's fault. I laughed and said that's just how we are, we apologise for existing sometimes. But then I thought about it properly and realised it's deeper than that.

When I was coming up in Ibadan, my mother would say sorry to my father for things that weren't even her fault. Sorry for the food being cold, sorry for the noise from the street, sorry for the rain delaying him. We carry that into everything. Even here in London, I catch myself saying sorry to patients for asking them to take their medication. My British colleagues look at me like I'm mad.

It made me wonder, are we really just polite or are we scared? Scared of being too much, of taking up space, of being a problem. I don't want Tola to grow up saying sorry for breathing. I want her to say sorry when she's wrong, not when she's just existing. Anyway, I don talk my own. Does anybody else notice this or is it just me and my generation?