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Time to get off that high remorse I’ve been striding

By Ed Goldman

“Regrets, I’d had a few/But then again, too few to mention…”

—From “My Way,” as sung by Frank Sinatra, and re-written (from the original French) by Paul Anka

I like to say I have no regrets about my life because I’m acutely aware of the fact that even if I did (or still) have them, there’s not much I can do about them.

Oh, I suppose I could have gone at the beginning of the month to my neighborhood temple on Yom Kippur (my tribe’s One-Day-Only of Atonement) and spent 24 hours rueing in Hebrew. If you must rue something, Hebrew’s a pretty good language in which to do it, since almost all of the regular prayers and psalms sound pretty mournful in the first place. In short, you won’t stand out as The Lone Ruer. 

On the other hand, I like that in Catholicism you confess your sins a little more privately—but since you’re likely to be doing it in English, to a guy whose sole purpose at the moment is hearing you express remorse, and you’re even encouraged to do it 365 days a year, I’m not sure I’d want to rue as a hobby. I think I’d rather scrapbook or start collecting plastic martini glasses at garage sales.

So, yes, there is something I can do about my regrets: apologize to everyone who was at the receiving end of whatever I did and have come to regret. But I’ve had the embarrassing experience of having people apologize to me for a long-ago insult or slight and realizing I don’t remotely recall that long-ago insult or slight. The reason this makes for an embarrassing situation is knowing that the apologizers have carried this around with them for years or even decades, felt bad about it and looked forward to being contrite. Who am I to deny them this relief and release? How dare I not remotely recall their no-doubt ugly insult or devastating slight?! 

That scenario has unfolded with me three times, once when the apologizer turned out to be a recovering alcoholic and making amends to me was part of her healing process. The trouble was, I was late for a meeting when the person showed up at my door and she wasn’t going to take “no need to do this” for an answer. By the time she was done blasting herself for her professional behavior to me I wanted to tell her if she really wanted to apologize to me for something, how about for taking so damn long to apologize to me for something I didn’t care about?

What brought this to mind was something I did recently on an airplane just before takeoff. My oh-so-significant-other had taken the pains to call Southwest Airline precisely 24 hours before our scheduled departure to try to line us up a decent place in the waiting line. She scored the slots A-49 and A-50, which meant we’d be able to slide into two seats of our choosing. 

Once we boarded, and the flight attendant announced our flight wasn’t sold out, my OSSO and I naturally tried to make the third (middle) seat of our row seem unavailable, so we could semi-stretch out for our relatively brief flight back home.

Well, a guy came down the aisle, saw we had an available seat and started making a beeline for it. This is when I did something regrettable. I began to ostentatiously wipe my face with my hands as though I were troubled or sweaty or sick or all three. My OSSO looked over at me and asked, “Are you okay?” and I somehow managed to toss her a wink and whisper, “Acting.”