Several weeks ago my wife, who was reading a novel, sent me a brief quotation from it that had intrigued her: about one of the characters, the author said that “She didn’t have any regrets. Sorrows, but not regrets” (Lisa Unger, Ink and Bone, Loc 1349 [e-book]).

I was also intrigued by it—the more so, the more I thought about it—until, you guessed it, it became one of those “termites in my brain” that wouldn’t go away.  After scratching my head about it for a few weeks and doing some research, I began the thought processes that always precede the actual writing—arranging the material I had, along with ways this might be relevant to instances in my own life, into the appropriate “pockets.

It was at that point, as I began writing, that it finally occurred to me in an “Aha  moment” that the conception and the experience of this relationship between sorrow and regret is a natural and logical follow-up to the previous blog an “the sacrament of failure.” That will become obvious in what follows.

The first things that emerged, as I had begun some research, were discussions, primarily from a psychological perspective, of the experience of regret and the difference between that and being sorry. For example, in an article from Psychology Today, entitled “The Psychology of Regret,” Melanie Greenburg defined regret as

“a negative cognitive or emotional state that involves blaming ourselves for a bad outcome, feeling a sense of loss or sorrow at what might have been, or wishing we could undo a previous choice that we made.”   

She goes on in the article, as well as in a later one entitled “The Neuroscience of Regret,” to warn of the dangers of harboring—or as she puts it, “getting stuck in”—regret.  Blaming yourself for past actions when there is nothing you can do to change them, can turn into depression and be damaging to body and mind.

Rick Hanson, in an article entitled, “Just One Thing: Forgive Yourself” (Greater Good Magazine, June 25, 2015), also argued that

“It’s important to acknowledge mistakes, feel appropriate remorse, and learn from them so they don’t happen again. But most people keep beating themselves up way past the point of usefulness.”

      Both he and Greenburg emphasize the importance of learning to forgive yourself—think of life as a journey where everybody makes mistakes—and let it go. When you have taken responsibility for your own actions and made amends when that was possible, it is time . . . wait for it . . .to “shake the dust off your feet and move on.”  Sound familiar? More to come.

I wasn’t long into my search for further light to be shed on the premise with which I began until I ran across an article by Christine Carter that she titled, “How to Let Go of an Old Regret” (in Greater Good Magazine,  September 20, 2018). In it she “confessed” that she knew one thing for certain regarding her divorce years before:

“If I’d made different choices ten years ago, I would not have the life I have now. It’s a life that I love, one where I’m happy and fulfilled. . . . I felt sorrow for mistakes I made a decade ago. It’s not that I regret [my divorce]. I don’t. I do believe it was the right thing. . . . . It was time to let go of some old regrets” (emphasis mine).

It was the first discovery, among many to come, of someone making a clear distinction between feeling sorry that a decision was preceded by mistakes or had caused hurts or difficulties, but not regretting the decision itself. One website that was “peppered” with such language was Ask MetaFilter.com. As the name implies, people can use the website to ask questions and the readers who follow the website can respond with answers or comments. The lead-off statement on the day I discovered it, presumable by the “owner” of the website, was as follows:

“I’ve always thought that there’s a self-evident disparity between feeling sorry that you’ve done something and wanting to take it all back. To my mind, apologizing for something means you feel completely terrible about it, but regretting something means you wish it could be undone. . . . My go-to example of the contrast is breaking up with my partner of a decade [ago] which . . . I’m very sorry to have needed to make, as well as one I would not ever take back even if you gave me a million bucks tucked inside a basket of puppies: I’m sorry, but I don’t regret it.”

While the relevance of this statement to these reflections is wide-eyed obvious, here is one of the questions generated by it and a few responses that are representative of the dozens that appeared on the website.

The question: Is there ever a situation in which it is acceptable to apologize for something you don’t regret?  And these are a few representative responses:

• Oh, absolutely, you can be genuinely, heartfelt sorry for something you said or did, but . . . you have no regrets.
• . . .you can absolutely apologize for the difficulty and pain experienced on the path towards doing the right thing, and not regret doing the right thing.
• I can think of plenty of situations where it would be reasonable to apologize for something I don’t regret. Not all problems have a solution that makes everyone happy.
• I was recently in a situation where I was in a position of leadership and had to make a decision that, in either case, was going to directly affect and hurt people and disrupt people’s lives. . . . I am really, really sorry. But I don’t regret the action I took, and I would take the same action again.

Even beyond my expectations when I began this exploration, I think it is clear that the distinction between sorrow and regret is confirmed and affirmed in the experiences of many, if not most, people, so in closing I will share a few experiences of my own that fit the patterns of “sorrow” and “regret” that have been established.

• The first one is the experience of a failed marriage. Since I shared it in my previous blog as an example of “the sacrament of failure,” I will not go into detail here but it is an equally good example for this conversation—i.e. in “shaking the dust off my feet and moving on,” I expressed profound sorrow for the incredible hurt it brought to my wife and our children, but I did not, could not, regret it because it was the right thing to do. I believed that at the time and the years ahead proved it to be true both for my wife and our children, as well as for me.
• The other experiences, like the last one noted from the website, arose from the couple of decades I spent as chief academic officer in two institutions of higher education. In each case, I was deeply sorry for the hurt and/or the loss of status imposed on someone, but I could not regret the decisions that were in the best interest of the institution and of the person’s colleagues.
• In one instance, I had to remove a person with many years of service as a teacher from the position of department chair.  The department was struggling due to the chair’s errors and other administrative and leadership weaknesses. Removing him from the position was doubly difficult and hurtful because his spouse was also employed by the institution.
• In the second case, I had to appoint someone as head of an academic division when another person, who was supported by a number of other faculty members, expected to be chosen for the position. The disappointed faculty member was excellent as a teacher and very supportive of colleagues, but whose administrative skills were, in my opinion, not up to the demands of the position.  Fortunately, over the next year the decision played out as a wise one, the new leader won the respect and support of the other candidate’s advocates and, eventually, of the disappointed candidate as well.
• Finally, the last instance of “sorry, but no regret,” involved a professor who was an excellent teacher and quite popular among students but who had allowed those strengths to nurture an arrogance that became an instrument of attempted dominance over others. This became particularly disturbing when this person, under the guise of being helpful to a new faculty member, became manipulative, deceiving, and demeaning. When this came to my attention, I knew that it required what is sometimes called a “come to Jesus” meeting. The conversation with this veteran faculty member and the department chair was, of course, a difficult one that required forcing this otherwise talented and valuable instructor to recognize and come to terms with unacceptable behavior that violated our ethical norms and, if continued, could lead to dismissal. It was no fun and I was sorry for the hurt it caused but I could not regret the necessary confrontation.

And so, in conclusion, I hope you recognize yourself in some instances in your life when you made a decision or took an action that caused hurt, disappointment, or difficulties for others, but while you are sorry for such effects, you cannot regret what you know to have been the right thing to do. And in the words of “the sacrament of failure,” you were able to “shake the dust off your feet and move on!”  May it ever be so.