Je Regrette Beaucoup
The Edith Piaf song may be uplifting, but its ultimate message is lost on me.
Whenever I hear “Je ne regrette rien,” I picture Piaf with her chin thrust out, defying anyone to challenge her insistence that she has no regrets. Oh yeah? Not even the time when you picked on your little brother, or when you had that affair with so-and-so and his wife found out? Well, you’re a better woman than I, Gunga Din, haunted as I am by regrets dating back to childhood and stretching into my 50s, 60s, and beyond. The very fabric of my life is dotted with memories of bad behavior, bad choices, bad patterns, and aspects of my personality that drove these behaviors and choices in the first place.
If you’ve lived a long life, as most of the readers of “What’s Age” have, you may have regrets too. But I realize that some of the more sanguine among you don’t. Positive thinking informs the way you live and relate to others, and you wake up every day full of hope, singing some version of “Oh what a beautiful morning.” If that’s you, I admire and envy you up the wazoo. You’re the poster child for what passes for mental health in America, an honor I’ll never qualify for…
…so let’s get back to the subject at hand and the questions you may have for a regret-laden creature like me.
Q: Do you wallow in some version of regret?
A: Yes.
Q: Why do you do it?
A: Beats me.
Q: Is there anything to be gained from this questionable habit?
A: Kind of.
What’s the verdict?
If you can learn from your regrets—if regret helps you avoid a repeat of the less-than-desirable behaviors of the past, some experts say—go for it.
According to an article by Stacey Colino published in the Washington Post last New Year’s Eve, there are five areas that cause regret for many people: education, career, romance, parenting, and self-improvement. What you’ve done and what you’ve left undone.
My regrets cluster around 4 out of these 5. The only area in which I feel I haven’t been half bad is parenting, but my son may disagree with that assessment. Still, that leaves 4, and what they have in common, in my case, is what my father used to call my lack of “stick-to-it-iveness.”
I didn’t stick to marriage (I’ve had three). I didn’t stick to grad school (I have not one but two unfinished master’s degrees in economics and global health respectively). And I didn’t stick to any of my jobs, unless you consider freelance writing a job. That I’ve stuck with, but let it be said that freelancing is a roach motel for people who flee from full-time employment due to their inability or unwillingness to abide by the rules of the game.
What if I could have been a different sort of person—the sort that people admire for her self-discipline, her focus, her consistent gym attendance? Wouldn’t that have been grand?
Uh, maybe not. Because if you crazily wish to have been someone else, that wish would have crashed and burned, no matter how many magic spells you tried to invoke. And if you start moving pieces of yourself around and replacing them with parts borrowed or stolen from others, you might turn into some version of Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from parts of corpses, zombies, fictional characters, or people you actually know and admire.
Still, these days, regret tends to fill my soul before my morning coffee has kicked in and my brain has turned reasonable. That’s when some random memory may decide to attack. Some insensitive remark I made to a college boyfriend before breaking up with him. Some little indiscretion at one of my jobs 25 years ago that prompted my boss to say how much I sucked at office politics. Or my poor performance at one among several auditions during my 20s or 30s, when I was pursuing a professional singing career in my usual erratic, conflicted way.
Of the four areas that tend to elicit feelings of regret (minus parenting), three are no longer pertinent. My education is behind me, and anyway, I’ve always been something of an autodidact, so I continue to absorb knowledge from various nerdy disciplines. My career as a freelance health writer is still a going concern, but I’m retired from romance. So that leaves self-improvement.
End-of-summer resolutions
Why wait until New Year’s Day? Colino has provided me with an instant list of resolutions I can use to improve myself right here and right now.
1. Don’t dwell on it—“it” meaning some specific instance of regret. Consistent with the American “efficiency” mindset, schedule a 10-minute interval to reflect on it and then move on to what really matters: productivity, self-promotion, and money.
2. Take corrective action. To do that, though, I’d need time-travel technology, because so many of the people I’ve disappointed, hurt, or wronged are dead.
3. Be kind to yourself. Apparently, self-compassion helps people cope with regret, so I’m all in with this one.
…and here’s my own contribution to the list:
4. Once you reach a certain age, regret may be unavoidable. It may not be a feature of daily life for some of you, but you may be missing out on one of the hidden pleasures of ageing: wallowing, at least periodically, in regret.
In the meantime, I hear the distant strains of a new song titled “Je Regrette Beaucoup.” When I sing it, I’ll jut out my chin and dare the bogey man—i.e., positive thinking—to come and get me.