“No Regrets!”
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’” (John Greenleaf Whittier)
Today, I wrote the following in my journal, right after listing 50 items on my gratitude list:
“Today, God, no regrets! Just praise, humility, obedience and gratitude!”
Like virtually every other human being who has lived more than four years, I have regrets. In fact, I probably have more than the average member of my species. Regret for the things I’ve done and the things I haven’t, regret for the people I’ve harmed, regret for not living out my own principles.
But these days, while not minimizing my screw-ups, I try to not wallow in regret. While I have regrets, I try not to let the regrets have me. The truth is this: Regrets have no beneficial effects, and many harmful ones.
How are regrets harmful? Let me count the ways!
First, they can’t change what happened or what I did. The past is a pretty stubborn critter. I may reframe it or look at it differently, but the picture itself is not going to change. I can learn from it, but I can’t teach it a single thing. In terms of the Serenity Prayer, the past is one of the things I cannot change. Therefore, I need God to “. . . grant me the serenity to accept the (past) things I cannot change . . . .”
Second, regrets harm my ability to move on, to grow, to become a better person. What gets my focus gets me. If I am focusing on the past, I am very likely to go back to the past. In any case, as long as I am filled with regrets, I am refusing to live in the present. And, the last time I checked, the present was the only time when I could live. To live in the past is to die before my time. I am a walking dead man when I regret my past.
Third (and related to the first two harmful effect of regret), regrets are an insidious form of self-deception. When I regret, I am pretending that I am taking my past seriously. I am not. I am trying to substitute feeling bad for doing what is good in the here and now. Allowing regrets to dominate me compromises the very positive qualities that I listed in my journal: “praise, humility, obedience and gratitude!”
Fourth, when I indulge in regrets, I am harming others. How so? When I am filled with regrets, I am not really available to those around me. And those around me need me. I am focused on myself, when I regret my past. Regretting my past is trying to drive a car, while steadfastly looking in the rearview mirror. It is just a matter of time before I rear-end the car in front of me or run over a pedestrian.
Finally, regret is a form of atheism. I am pretending that I am a competent judge of myself. I am also pretending that my past attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words are too bad to be forgiven. As a Christian, this is a form of heresy, bordering on a denial of the very existence and goodness of God. Living even on the border of atheism is a dangerous place to live.
So, just for today, no regrets. No looking back. No beating myself up. Just living well. Just awareness. Just love.
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