Regret

I regret to inform you that ...
It is with deepest regret that we ...
Regretfully, I cannot ...
It is to be regretted that ...

Please send my sincere regrets.
Any regrets?

The Oxford Learners Dictionary gives us the following definitions:

Noun
A feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done.
Verb
Used in polite formulas to express apology for, or sadness at, an occurrence or an inability to accept an invitation.

If one were to examine the etymology of regret on a website like https://www.etymonline.com, one might be surprised to find how much this often used word is associated with its prefix re-, to do or think again. The word regret comes to us from the Late Middle English period through the French regreter, "to bewail" (the dead).

The question: 'Do you have any regrets?' regularly finds its way into conversations about the meaning of life and, as I have grown older, it has occupied my thoughts more consistently. Looking at the French version now, it feels like to regret something is to mourn that which is already dead. I suspect that this has encouraged psychologists and self-help writers to see regret as an obstacle to growth and self-fulfilment. 

"Never look back with regret," they tell us. "It only keeps you in the past."

A life regretted could be said to be a life lived backwards according to this view.

In more modern times, regret seems to be associated with guilt, as in referring to something we should never have done. Guilt is an insidious worm that eats at our self-esteem and confidence. Buried inside it is the concept of "should" and implies that we have behaved in a way that was not expected or valued by the people and institutions ruling our lives. When we have many regrets, I believe we are assuming that we had control over most of the factors that influenced our decisions. We look back, often with memories which have been overlaid with wilfulness, uncertainty, time and self-deception. With clear hindsight, we may find that our control over our lives was not as  complete as we thought. Perhaps we just want it to have been.

I believe guilt-free regret is a healthy attitude to cultivate. If we can re-examine our past in a way that recognises the decisions we made as simple expressions of who we were, as choices that set us on a path to the present moment, we can avoid self-blame and build emotional resilience and optimism. If I am asked about my regrets I am more willing to say that I have them, whereas in the past I was conscious of needing to appear strong and forthright by insisting that I didn't have any, that I would "do it all again." It would make me look less like a fool. The truth is that there are some things I did that I would not do again because I can see where they lead me. They became major turning-points for me, with consequences that took time to resolve and integrate, time to divest them of the shame that attached to them.

Feelings of sadness, sorrow and shame associated with past actions that we perceive as "wrong", "selfish", "immature", "immoral" or "stupid" are natural human responses but the feelings of guilt that may come with them lessen our agency to act with honesty and goodwill, even gentleness.

If we keep dragging the "shoulds" of our past into our present, we will never be content or at peace.

And that is something to truly regret.

We are old when regrets take the place of dreams.  
- adapted from a John Barrymore quote.

Image source: theinspirationallifestyle.com