I may regret saying this, but you can’t live in the past
Frank Sinatra famously crooned how he had regrets, but too few to mention, while French chanteuse Edith Piaf defiantly claimed that she regretted nothing.
But for the rest of us mere mortals, regrets can sometimes come with a capital R – culminating as we age into a long list of woulda, coulda, shouldas.
Our culture doesn’t always look kindly on regret. It’s seen as a waste of time and a step away from the “put one foot in front of the other” pioneering spirit of the country.
“What’s done is done” and “No use crying over spilt milk” are just some of the cultural rallying cries. Yet according to research reported in an AARP newsletter, regrets can “impede the ability to recover from stressful life events by extending emotional reactions for months.”
At some point, we have all likely suffered from what are considered the components of regret:
Denial. Make it go away.
Bewilderment. What was I thinking? How could I have done that?
Punishment. I could just kick myself.
Perseveration. A fancy word for compulsive rumination of an event.
Most Americans’ top regrets center around education, career and marriage, with regrets falling along gender lines. Professor Noel Roese of the Kellogg School of Management found that women’s biggest regrets focused on relationships, while men’s were more career focused.
Both sexes, however, expressed “regrets of omission.” What they hadn’t done was more painful for both genders. “Lost opportunities linger in our memory longer, and we have more time to see the different things we could have done,” says Roese.
Many psychologists suggest attempting a “a do over” to come to terms with regret. They urge patients to try to recreate an experience now by getting an educational goal they missed or making an apology to estranged family members. But do overs are not always possible as we age and have more limited time.
So how do we learn to live with those regretted roads not taken, missed opportunities and the one that got away? Journalist and author Kathryn Schulz believes that we can help heal deep, dark regrets by learning to laugh at ourselves.
“That might sound glib, but sometimes laughter and black humor can help lighten our load,” she says.
She also maintains that the adage “Time heals all wounds” really works. Schulz says we must learn to love our messy, “flawed selves,” as well as recognizing that we share a universality when it comes to regrets. The knowledge that others have regrets, that we are not alone in the loneliness of “if only” helps teach us to embrace our regrets and live with them.
Maggie Lennon is a writer and photographer who writes about navigating the aging process. Check out her blog, “The Sensational Sixties. An everywoman’s guide to getting older.” Contact her at maggielennon164@yahoo.com.