Guilt and shame are equally powerful emotions, they can have an intense power over our lives and can push and pull a person in one direction or the other, they are opposites.The feeling of guilt can often compel a person to put right what was wrong, to heal a past hurt, or broken relationship. Whereas the desire to avoid the perceived humiliation of shame, by making the first move, may prevent a person from doing so. Yes, guilt and shame are both powerful emotions, one can be harnessed positively, whilst the other is only ever negative and destructive.
During one conversation a friend began telling me of some regrets they had about their life. We discussed what could be done and I shared some recent experiences in my own life. I have myself finally come to peace with some guilt and regret in recent months, it has lifted a great weight from my psyche, something family members commented on over Christmas. It seems I have once again been liberated from some shame, thank God.
Now all this brings me to a conversation after the last “Singing Meditation” when a congregational member was talking about shame and mentioned a book I read many years “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Bronnie Ware.
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent many years working in palliative care. She worked with patients who were close to death, during the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded the patients dying epiphanies in a blog called “Inspiration and Chai”, this led to a book that she published a few years ago called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”. In the book she describes the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives and what this can teach we who live on. She highlighted that there were five particular themes that emerged from her conversations.
The five regrets were:
Number 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me: "This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."
Number 2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard: "This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."
Number 3: I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings: "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."
Number 4: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends: "Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."
Number 5: I wish that I had let myself be happier: "This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."
I found these top five regrets very interesting, I wonder what we who live, what ours might be. There is time to do something about it and live with a sense of freedom and enjoy what time we have left, for while we are certainly living, we are also dying. I have, in recent weeks, sensed a deepening peace in my being as I have addressed certainly three of the five regrets. This is good, this is progress. It is good to know I am not a total slave to perfectionism. That said there is still some regret, there is guilt for mistakes I have made, but there is a decreasing sense of shame, thank God.
I know that most of the guilt and regret, the source of shame in my life, stems from a lack of courage at times, to not do what was mine to do and to live the life as authentically as I could. I feel less shame about this though as it just proves to me how fully human I am, there is no shame in that.
That said I still live with regrets though and I carry no shame about this.
Some say that they have no regrets about anything. It is interesting that perhaps the most heard song at funerals is “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and that famous line “Regrets I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention” or perhaps the famous Edith Piath “je ne regrette rien” no regret. A more modern version would be Robbie Williams’ “No Regrets”
Is this really true though? Can any of us truly say that as our lives end that we have no regrets? I’m not sure I can. I cannot make the claim that I have no regrets at all. There have been many failures and mistakes along the way. Most folk live with regret and struggle with parts of their past. Like King David I am sure we could all write our Psalms of Lament.
Regret is an interesting word, originally it was a kind of lament, from the Old French word ‘regreter”, meaning “one who bewails the dead,” which comes from a Germanic root meaning “to greet.” So, it makes sense that it is the dying that perhaps feel regret the most intensely. As Mark Nepo has said of regret “We always face these two phases of regret: to bewail what is dead and gone, and, if we can move through that grief, to greet the chance to do things differently as we move on.” Regret can inspire us to change, so long as it is not fuelled by shame.
Nepo notes something of real value here, it is a lesson from grief. Yes, regret is a lament for what has gone, what has died, but if we greet it fully with love we can learn from the past and do things differently in the future. The response to regret is both of life and death. The choice is ours. By the way this is the one choice we have in life. We do not choose what happens to us but we can choose how we respond to what happens to us. This is the one ultimate freedom, that is open to all of us.
To quote Viktor Frankl:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
So, the response to regret is ours. We can either choose life or death. We can close in and shut down or we can create with love.
There are two wonderful examples of responses to regret in the New Testament. They are found in the Easter narrative, following Jesus’s betrayal. Luke’s Gospel (Ch22 vv 60-62) depicts Peter regretting his betrayal of Jesus. He wept bitterly for his fear based denial and yet how did he respond. Well, it was on Peter that the earlier Christian Church was built. For Peter Hope was once again born. Matthew (Ch 27 vv 3-5) depicts a very different response to regret that of Judas Iscariot. This is much closer to the original meaning of regret, which meant to bewail the dead. His response was to take his life. Both Peter and Judas can be seen as examples of how we can act with guilt or from shame over the things we regret in life, we are all much the same.
Regret has its place; we need to feel it and to respond in life giving and affirming ways. It matters how we live with regret, is it in life affirming ways or shame based life denying ones.
As Joan Chittister wrote in “The Gift of Years”
“The burden of regret is that, unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.
The blessing of regret is clear — it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life in an entirely new way. It urges us on to continue becoming.”
We all have regrets. It is delusional to say that we should never have them, in fact a person who never feels regret or guilt has something missing in their humanity. Yes, regrets, fuelled by shame, can gnaw away at our souls, but it we are wise, regrets can be powerful teachers. We need a lot of humility and curiosity to learn from our regrets rather than simply allowing them to whittle away at the spirit. Above all we need hope: if we regret something but are willing to learn from it, we must dare to hope that we can learn from it. All humility is, in some sense, a thing of hope: when we humble ourselves, we are living in the hope that we can do better.
So I say let’s face and truly know those things we regret, no matter how many times we have failed to live up to our ideals. Let’s be powered by appropriate guilt and not fetted by inappropriate shame. We need not be paralysed lamenting the past, nore do we need to close the door on it. Let us instead move through the grief of regret and greet the future with its possibility of what might yet be.
Below is a video devotion based
on the material in this "blogspot"
