New Year’s Eve may as well be the day of regrets. We have been conditioned to look back on our actions and wonder what we should have done differently — people we mistreated, opportunities we missed, bad habits we adopted. Many people will also likely do things tonight that they will regret as early as tomorrow morning.
Regret can be toxic. You can end up spending so much time thinking about the past that you fail to live in the present. Ruminating over that lost love can keep you from recognizing the potential one in front of you. Fear of making the same mistake in your career can keep you from taking a new opportunity. Beware the paralyzing fear of future regret.
But as we spend this day reliving our past mistakes, it’s important to remember that regret also has a purpose. It is an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. Regret is the tinge of pain that teaches you not to touch a hot stove; it hurts, but it may stop you from getting hurt worse.
Not everyone seems to understand this. Celebrities who make stupefying decisions regularly come out afterward and say they have “no regrets.” Neither do CEOs whose bad decisions cost their companies millions and lead to layoffs. And politicians seem to be basically regret-proof these days.
Mark Robinson, whose gubernatorial run in North Carolina led to embarrassing revelations about his online comments on porn, seems unbothered by his car crash of a campaign. “We have no regrets,” he said. Ditto former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose defamation of two Georgia election workers led to a staggering $150 million award. “I have no regrets at all,” he told CNN in July.
Donald Trump is the undisputed master of this. One of his former executives has written that he “sees being sorry as a weakness.” Trump once said that he does not typically seek God’s forgiveness — despite that being a central practice of the Christian faith — because he does not need to. “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I am not making mistakes?” he said. It’s hard to have regret if you don’t think you did anything wrong.
It’s not limited to the right, either. Top staffers of the Kamala Harris campaign were roundly criticized for failing to take responsibility on a recent episode of “Pod Save America,” talking instead about economic headwinds, the media and other factors beyond their control. If they have personal regrets, they didn’t mention them.
Regrets have become such anathema that some people are hoping to avoid them entirely. You can find advice in magazines and self-help books about how to live a long, full life with zero regrets. This is backward. If you live to a ripe, old age and have no regrets, then you didn’t really live. No regrets means you took no chances; you risked nothing. A life with no regrets is safe, boring and unexamined.
We have even seen some people try to use the fear of regret as a political argument.
In a 2007 Supreme Court decision, then-Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that while there was “no reliable data,” it was likely that “some women come to regret their choice” to have an abortion and that, therefore, the government has the right to restrict certain procedures that they might one day regret even more. In a recent hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the state of Tennessee could have an interest in barring minors from receiving gender-affirming health care because of the “physical and psychological effects on those who later change their mind.”
In both situations, the data suggests that the percentage of people living with such regrets is small. But we have been so trained to avoid regret that even the potential for it has become an argument for restricting the rights of others.
Importantly, regret isn’t just a personal issue; it’s a political one. Regret is part of the price of freedom. The Constitution guarantees us the right to pursue happiness, but it does not guarantee us happiness. There’s always a risk that the path you choose will not work out. On the flip side, you cannot regret something that you had no choice in. Regret is only possible when you have the freedom to make your own choices.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.