J Relig Health (2009) 48:224–239
DOI 10.1007/s10943-009-9238-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
Coming to Terms with Our Regrets
Nathan Carlin Æ Donald Capps
Published online: 28 February 2009
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract This article focuses on the personal experience of regret and the importance of
coming to terms with our regrets. It begins with a sermon preached by the first author in
which the issue of regret is explored by means of a summary of the film The Big Kahuna,
continues with a discussion of recent articles (Tomer and Eliason, Existential and spiritual
issues in death attitudes, 2008; Mannarino et al., Existential and spiritual issues in death
attitudes, 2008) on the concept of regret formulated by Landman (Landman, Regret: A
theoretical and conceptual analysis, 1987; Regret: The persistence of the possible, 1993),
and on regret therapy, and concludes with a pastoral care case in which a dying woman
expresses both future-related and past-related regrets. The case is interpreted in light of
regret therapy’s emphasis on parabolic experiences and reframing techniques.
Keywords Past-related regret Future-related regret Regrets of commission Regrets of omission Listening Authenticity Honesty Parabolic experiences Reframing Death Janet Landman Grafton T. Eliason
On September 21, 2008, Nathan Carlin preached a sermon titled ‘‘Be Quick to Listen,’’ a
phrase from the epistle of James, chapter 1, verse 19: ‘‘You must understand this, my
beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does
not produce God’s righteousness.’’ The sermon followed the method that he learned from
Dykstra (2001). He began the sermon with the following account of an episode that
occurred the previous Christmas when he was home for the holidays:
N. Carlin
Department of Religious Studies, Rice University, MS-15, P.O. Box 1892,
Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
D. Capps (&)
Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
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I couldn’t take another word of it, even though, on some level, I thought that they
might be right, because, after all, I have seen my uncle’s greediness. I probably have
said similar things. But right then I didn’t want my mother and father deriding my
uncle about cheating my grandmother out of money. ‘‘She is dead,’’ I blurted out
sternly and coldly over Christmas dinner. ‘‘Grandma has been dead for six years. Let
it go.’’ ‘‘What?’’ my father asked in disbelief. I replied with the same stern voice:
‘‘Grandma was fine. Even if she were cheated out of money, she was fine. She had
enough money to live out her days. She was fine. Let it go.’’ My father responded,
and now he had a stern tone: ‘‘It’s not about the money. It’s about the principle.’’
Next and I am not quite sure why, I outright attacked my father with words: ‘‘You
know darn well it is about the money. Grandma was cheated out of money, so that
meant you were cheated out of money. It was six years ago. Let it go. Do we have to
talk about this over Christmas dinner?’’ Now my father had enough. He put down his
fork and left the room. And then my mother began to cry.
Carlin repeated the verse from the epistle of James and said, ‘‘Be quick to listen. I sure
wasn’t quick to listen on that day, on Christmas, no less.’’
As the title suggests, the sermon was about listening. After relating this personal story,
Carlin cited Nichols’ (1995) observation in The Lost Art of Listening that ‘‘we don’t really
listen to each other’’ (p. 1) and his suggestion that ‘‘Most failures of understanding are not
due to self-absorption or bad faith, but to defensive reactions that crowd out understanding
and concern’’ (p. 3). Thus, ‘‘to really listen [one needs] to suspend [one’s] own agenda,
forget about what [one] might say next, and concentrate on being a receptive vehicle for
the other person’’ (p. 63).
As the sermon developed, however, it also became a sermon about regret, especially
how accepting one’s regrets is a critical factor in one’s capacity to listen to others. The
theme of regret emerged through Carlin’s mention of his all-time favorite movie, The Big
Kahuna, based on the play Hospitality Suite. He noted that he had seen the movie at least
30 times, and that, for him, it feels like a parable because ‘‘one can keep returning to it and
learning from it.’’ He confesses, however, that ‘‘nearly everyone to whom I have recommended the movie hasn’t liked it!’’
The whole movie takes place in a hospitality suite in a mediocre hotel in Wichita,
Kansas, and there are only three main characters: Larry, Phil, and Bob. They are in the
lubricant business and are in Wichita to make a sale to a rich and important businessman,
whom Phil and Larry refer to as ‘‘The Big Kahuna.’’ In traditional Hawaiian society, a
kahuna is a person with specialized knowledge of ritual, agriculture, navigation, sorcery,
etc.; the term now applies to any person or thing to which larger-than-life power or
authority is attributed (Agnes 2001, p. 779).
Phil and Larry are old friends. They are in their fifties. Recently divorced and very
melancholy, Phil has an affable and gentle spirit about him. Larry, on the other hand, is
somewhat manic and very abrasive. Bob, a recent college graduate, is a young, goodlooking man full of energy and optimism. When he looks in the mirror, he is confident
about himself, about how he looks. Yet when he looks inside of himself, he is unsure about
his character. He is a faithful Baptist, and he wants to be the best Christian he can be. He’s
recently married, he doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t smoke. He is a pure young man.
Before Larry arrives at the hospitality suite, Bob has a chance to talk with Phil. Bob
compliments Phil, telling him that his secretary said he had a face full of character. Phil
laughs, but with a tint of melancholy, and replies, ‘‘I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and
assume she meant that in a good way.’’ Bob then asks Phil, what is character? Is it
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something that one is born with, something that is inside of you that reveals itself over
time? Or does one have to go through certain things to attain it? Phil doesn’t answer at the
time. He only says, ‘‘It’s a two-edged sword, Bob.’’
Later in the movie, Phil and Bob return to the topic of character. This occurs after Larry
and Bob have gotten into a huge fight over religion. The fight occurred because Bob had a
chance to help Larry and Phil make a very big sale to the Big Kahuna but instead of talking
business, he talked to the rich man about Jesus. The fight between Larry and Bob got
physical, and Phil had to break it up. Larry left the room, and although Bob won the fight,
he is visibly shaken.
Lighting a cigarette, Phil approaches Bob and begins, ‘‘The man we just chased from
the room….’’ Bob interjects, ‘‘We didn’t chase anyone.’’ Phil begins again, ‘‘The man who
just left the room, I trust him. He’s been my friend for many years. Now, do I trust him
because I have known him for a long time? There are lots of people I have known a long
time and wouldn’t trust them to wipe my dog’s behind. And there are others I could take or
leave. But Larry’s not one of them, because he is honest.’’
Bob replies, ‘‘Is he honest, or is he just blunt?’’ Phil replies, ‘‘He is honest. He is blunt as
well, and sometimes that is part of being honest. You can be blunt without being honest,
but Larry is not one of those kinds of people. He is an honest man.’’ Phil takes a puff of his
cigarette and continues: ‘‘Now I believe there is something deep inside of you, Bob, that
wants to be honest. But the question you need to ask yourself is if that honesty has touched
all of your life. You see, it doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil
rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate with No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make
you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody
honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are—just to
find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to
steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And then you’re not a human being;
you’re a marketing rep.’’
With this, Phil returns to the question of character. He says to Bob, ‘‘We were talking
before about character. You were asking me about character. And we were speaking of
faces. But the question is much deeper than that. The question is, do you have any
character at all? And if you want my honest opinion, Bob, you do not: for the simple reason
that you don’t regret anything yet.’’
With a note of disbelief in his voice, Bob asks, ‘‘You mean I have to do things I will
regret to attain character?’’ Phil replies, ‘‘No, Bob. I’m saying that you’ve already done
plenty of things to regret. You just don’t know what they are yet. It’s when you discover
them, when you see the folly in something you’ve done and you wish you had it to do over.
But you know you can’t because it’s too late. So you pick that thing up and you carry it
with you. To remind you that life goes on…. Then you will attain character because
honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself all across your face. Until that day,
however, you cannot expect to go beyond a certain point.’’
Of course, Carlin did not end the sermon here. He went on to point out that the problem
Phil saw with Bob’s passion for spreading Christianity was that it was inauthentic. After
all, Bob was laying his hands on his conversations, guiding them so that he could make a
sales pitch for Jesus, and, in doing so, he was not really listening. The same was true of
Larry. He was not really interested in hearing Bob’s point because he was already convinced that he was right. And, predictably in situations where people are passionate about
any given topic and are not authentically listening to one another, the situation ended in
anger and violence.
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Carlin did not conclude the sermon with the Christmas Day episode. He did not need to
make explicit the association between this family conflict and the fight that occurred
between Larry and Bob. He entrusted the two stories in which the older man left the room
and the younger man was left to contemplate what had taken place to his listeners’ own
capacity to contemplate their meaning for their own lives. Thus, the sermon was itself
illustrative of the art of listening. On the other hand, sermons require a conclusion, and this
is how Carlin brought it to a close: ‘‘Maybe, as Phil suggests, one must have a certain level
of character in order to be authentic. Perhaps one must know what one’s regrets are in
order to have the capability to listen. We all have our regrets. But if Phil is right, such
regrets, when we come to terms with them, can make us into more authentic people, people
who are quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger’’ (emphases added).
Coming to Terms with Our Regrets
When Capps read Carlin’s sermon, he was reminded of an edited book which he had
recently received from Grafton T. Eliason, a former student of his who is now an Associate
Professor of Counselor Education at California University of Pennsylvania. Among the
eighteen articles in the book, there were two, both coauthored by Eliason, on regret (Tomer
and Eliason 2008; Mannarino et al. 2008). The book is concerned with existential and
spiritual issues in death attitudes, a subject rather far removed from what occurred in the
hospitality suite in Wichita, Kansas, but more germane to the conversation at Carlin’s
home about his grandmother’s last years and his uncle’s alleged greediness. More
importantly, however, the two articles cited above are about regret. Together, they offer
some insights into what it means to come to terms with our regrets.
Citing works by Landman (1987, 1993), Tomer and Eliason (2008) note that regret is
both emotional and cognitive. As an emotional phenomenon it includes, at the very least,
an element of displeasure or dissatisfaction. As a cognitive phenomenon it implies
counterfactual thinking, that is, the consideration of alternative actions. In conformity with
this duality, Landman (1993) defines regret as a ‘‘painful cognitive/emotional state of
feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgressions, shortcomings, or mistakes’’ (p. 36). As such, it may include features of disappointment, sadness, remorse, and
guilt, but it can also be distinguished from these.
Generally speaking, regret is a broader concept than remorse or guilt. In addition,
although frequently felt in relation to actions or inactions belonging to the past and for
whom the person bears responsibility, regret can also involve uncontrollable and accidental
events.
A distinction can also be made between regret and disappointment. In the case of
disappointment, one focuses primarily on outcomes. In the case of regret, one focuses
primarily on actions. These actions, of course, produce outcomes, but one focuses primarily on the actions that produced these outcomes. Such actions may be regretted even if
they do not result in negative outcomes.
On the other hand, the authors note that the ability of humans to imagine alternative
outcomes is at the basis of the phenomenon of regret. They cite studies which indicate
that persons generally find it easier to imagine having abstained from an action that they
performed in the past than imagining an action that they did not perform. Thus, regrets
related to actions that were actually taken or performed are more likely to occur than
regrets related to actions that might have been taken or performed but were not. This
finding, however, applies more to short-term than to long-term regret. When older
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persons were asked to reflect on their lives, inactions or omissions tended to produce
more regret.
Tomer and Eliason also discuss coping with regret. They note that a consideration of
possible future regrets may play a positive role in minimizing one’s regrets and in resisting
temptation. The awareness that one will regret a particular action can play a valuable role
in discouraging one from performing this action. In addition, regrets of actions or inactions
of the past may direct us in our future endeavors and, in this sense, ‘‘regrets are useful’’ (p.
161). They also cite research suggesting that, whereas older persons are often helped by
deemphasizing their responsibility for past events, younger persons are more likely to be
helped by recognizing that they are capable of influencing the situation or altering the
outcome.
In their discussion of the role of regrets in death anxiety, Tomer and Eliason identify
two types of regrets: those that focus on the past (things one should have done but did not
do and things one should not have done but did) and those that focus on the future (projects
that will not be completed, events that will be missed, etc.). Their conversations with
persons who reflected upon these two types of regrets enabled them to identify some of the
more common regrets and to test these out on undergraduate students. They found that
most of the types of regret were those related to inactions in the past (e.g., not spending
quality time with friends), having certain undesired characteristics, or lacking desired
characteristics (e.g., not being independent). A few responses dealt with regrettable
actions, such as attempting to please others, being impulsive in one’s actions, following
others’ values, and wasting time on unimportant things (which implies failure to spend
time on more important things). The authors conclude that the highest percentage of regrets
relate to relationships (e.g., not spending enough time with family and friends), followed
by regrets relating to future goals (e.g., not saving money, not working hard enough to
improve one’s health and fitness). These regrets suggest that regrets of omission tended to
predominate, thus supporting earlier research findings that regrets of inaction ultimately
persist longer and are more pronounced.
Mannarino et al. (2008) also begin their article with reference to the works of Janet
Landman. However, instead of simply noting that regret is both an emotion and a cognition
they point to Landman’s view that it involves a felt thought and reasoned emotion
(Landman 1993, p. 45). A felt thought is likely to involve recognition of a discrepancy
between a goal or aspiration and the reality of what exists. For example, a person may
think, ‘‘It was a bad decision to drop out of college because I am now unable to get the job
that I could otherwise have.’’ This felt thought is likely to be accompanied by a reasoned
emotion, such as a profound wish or desire that the gap between dreams and reality did not
exist. This wish or desire, in turn, may be accompanied by feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or even anger at oneself because the decision resulted in the absence of
occupational opportunities.
The authors note, however, that regret is to be distinguished from feelings of disappointment, sadness, remorse, guilt, shame, or anger, and they point out that ‘‘individuals
who seek counseling often describe very complex and intertwined feelings and thoughts
that, when finally unraveled, lead to regret’’ (p. 319). What, then, is regret? ‘‘In common
terms, regret is the experience one has when realizing that life did not, or will not, turn out
as one has hoped’’ (p. 318).
More specifically, however, regrets can be differentiated on the basis of whether they
are past-related or future-related. Most clients tend to think of regret in terms of actions
(commissions) or inactions (omissions) of the past. The client wishes to undo or to have
undone whatever has passed, in order to yield a better outcome. In presenting the following
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examples, the authors encourage the reader to keep in mind the complex nature of the
regret in terms of related feelings, thoughts, content, and agent:
• I did not spend enough time with family, depriving them and myself of love. (omission)
• I never said to my mother how much I loved and respected her before she died.
(omission)
• I said hurtful things to my spouse and we never reconciled before he died.
(commission)
• I decided to be a business person even though I was never happy with this career
choice. (commission)
Regret may also be related to the future. Sometimes called anticipatory regret, futureoriented regret refers to the realization that, for any number of reasons, certain hopes for
the future will not be fulfilled. The authors offer these examples:
•
•
•
•
Because I am in prison, my son will never have a full-time father.
Because of my illness, I will not live to be a grandparent.
My husband has died and our children will grow up without him in their lives.
Our daughter’s illness means that she will not be able to achieve her dreams of
attending college.
These examples of past-related and future-related regrets indicate that each type may be
related to the other. That is, a person may experience future-related regret because of
mistakes made in the past.
The authors discuss the outcome of regret and suggest that these can either be positive
or negative. In common language, phrases such as ‘‘No use crying over spilt milk’’ or
‘‘What’s done is done’’ imply that regret is basically unproductive, a waste of time, but also
of thought and emotion. But regret can also be viewed more negatively than simply
unproductive. The authors point out:
Some people become so mired in their regret that their ruminations actually interfere
with growth. For many individuals, the focus on regret can become all-consuming
and can impair healthy functioning in daily living. The preoccupation with past- or
future-related regret limits a person’s ability to experience, appreciate, and live in the
present (p. 321).
The authors note in this connection a study by Lecci et al. (1994) that explored life
regrets and current goals as predictors of psychological adjustment. They wanted to know
whether a gap between what happened in the past and one’s current goals may be related to
psychological adjustment, and they found, perhaps not surprisingly, that the discrepancy
between one’s past goals and one’s current situation tends to interfere with one’s current
goal functioning, or one’s ability to work toward a planned future. A study by Stewart and
Vandewater (1999) found that many of the middle-age women were unable to use
examination of life regrets to motivate goal setting for the future. Stewart and Vandewater
concluded that ‘‘regret alone is insufficient to bring about actual life changes just as
external barriers are insufficient to prevent them’’ (p. 321; from Stewart and Vandewater
1999, p. 21).
On the other hand, the authors, citing Landman’s book on regret, note that regret can
also have positive outcomes, serving important functions for both individuals and societies
by providing useful information about our behaviors and choices: ‘‘Pragmatically,
acknowledging and examining regret is one way in which both individuals and societies
learn from their mistakes and become mobilized to make things right in the present or not
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to make the same mistake in the future’’ (p. 322). The process of dealing with regret may
also have moral or ethical benefits. As Landman observes:
Regardless of how bad are the regretted matters, genuine regret signifies that you
have standards of excellence, decency, morality, or ethics you still care about—a
good thing in itself. In addition, remaining in connection with your better values
through regret can further the purpose of moving you to behave differently if a
similar situation should present itself in the future (p. 322; from Landman 1993, p.
26).
Thus, ‘‘Examining one’s regrets can be extremely important for selfhood, potentially
leading one toward a life of greater integrity and connecting the individual ‘with values
that are part of what make him or her humane’’’ (p. 322; quoting Landman 1993, p. 28).
The authors conclude that regret can have both liabilities and benefits, depending in part
on the individual’s own perceptions and reactions. They suggest that regret is not simply
defined by events or actions, but also by the person’s reflections on these events or actions
and the desire to change them. Citing Carl R. Rogers’ Client-Centered Therapy (1951), the
authors conclude that ‘‘regret may be associated with an individual’s experience of living
incongruently or inauthentically’’ (p. 323).
This conclusion brings us back to Carlin’s sermon, specifically to his observation:
‘‘Maybe, as Phil suggests, one must have a certain level of character in order to be
authentic…. We all have our regrets. But if Phil is right, such regrets, when we come to
terms with them, can make us into more authentic people.’’
A Case of Regret
The fact that the two articles in the book edited by Tomer, Eliason and Wong were
concerned to relate regret and attitudes toward death also reminded Capps of a pastoral
care case in Casebook in Pastoral Counseling edited by Cryer and Vayhinger (1962, pp.
59–63), a case that he had earlier discussed (Capps 2002, pp. 94–97) as an illustration of
Erikson’s (1963) point that ‘‘Shame is an emotion insufficiently studied, because in our
civilization it is so early and easily absorbed by guilt’’ (p. 252). The very fact that he
focused in his earlier discussions on the woman’s feelings of shame but did not consider
that the case is also one of regret illustrates a central point of the studies we have just
reviewed that regret needs to be distinguished from feelings of disappointment, sadness,
remorse, guilt, shame, etc. One might say that in his concern to distinguish shame from
guilt feelings, Capps failed to distinguish the regret (which, as we have seen, is both an
emotion and a cognition) from the shame that the woman was also experiencing. Thus,
Marnarino et al.’s (2008) point that ‘‘individuals who seek counseling often describe very
complex and intertwined feelings and thoughts that, when finally unraveled, lead to regret’’
(p. 319) is certainly applicable here.
The case, which editors Cryer and Vayhinger title ‘‘Pastor, I’m Going to Die,’’ is one of
56 cases in the Casebook in Pastoral Counseling (1962), cases which were originally
published in a succession of journals: The Pastor (1945–1955), The New Christian
Advocate (1956–1958), and Christian Advocate (1959–1962). Each case was written by a
pastor and comments on the case were written by experts in the pastoral care and counseling field. The comment on this particular case was written by Paul E. Johnson, who, at
that time, was professor of psychology and pastoral counseling at Boston University
School of Theology. The case begins:
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I went to call upon a woman who was dying of cancer. She was sixty-eight and had
been bedridden for a year. Although she was not a member of the church I was
serving—nor even of the same denomination—her son, who was a member, asked
that I visit her. He informed me that she had a month or less to live, that she had
regularly attended church before her illness, and that she had missed going a great
deal. The week before he had recorded our church service and played it for her.
Continuing his narrative, the pastor noted that he had gone to her home immediately after
the Sunday-morning service and had no time to make formal preparation. Furthermore:
Mentally, I was quite worried. I wished to give the person comfort, at least, but my
own personal anxieties at facing death were a great hindrance. The ride to the home
was a silent one on my part, while Tim, the son, explained the facts noted here.
The woman (‘‘Mrs. A’’) was lying in bed in the small living room. It was a hospital bed
placed very close to the window so that she could see out by turning her head to one side:
Tim introduced me as the new preacher. She smiled broadly but said nothing. Tim
explained my presence and told his mother that I was going to stay for dinner. She
motioned for a chair to be brought to her side, and when I was seated she looked at
me with the faded, tired eyes I had so often associated with death.
She began the conversation by asking, ‘‘I suppose you know I’m going to die?’’ He
couldn’t think of an answer, so she continued:
I really don’t mind dying, in a way. It’s just that there are so many things I want to
do. I was just lying here looking at the hills and the flowers. I always kept the flowers
nice. I can’t believe that I’ll not see the flowers next year. It… it seems impossible.
He replies: ‘‘Beauty seems to have a way of continuing year in and year out,’’ to which she
responds:
Not like people. You know, Reverend, lying in bed waiting to die has some good
points. I’ve been thinking. It’s all so silly—I mean, life—its arguments, feuds, and
all. It’s all so silly when you think about it.
He responds: ‘‘It’s easy to place the stress at the wrong point in life, I suppose,’’ and she
agrees:
Oh, how true. Sometimes I feel like laughing at my life. When I think of the
heartaches and tears and… and worries (here she smiled), I just feel like laughing.
It’s… it’s all so futile. Isn’t it in the Bible, ‘‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity’’?
He nods affirmatively, adding, ‘‘Sometimes our particular position helps to make things
clearer.’’ She again agrees, ‘‘Oh, yes,’’ then hesitates and addresses him: ‘‘Reverend, Tim
tells me you were in the war. You’ve probably faced death.’’ He replies, ‘‘Yes, it’s an
experience I’ve not forgotten.’’
She moved up in her bed and smiled broadly: ‘‘Then you know, Reverend, how I feel
about dying! I don’t really mind at all, yet I don’t want to; there are so many things to do.’’
He responds, ‘‘I suppose we do have a deep desire to take care of unfinished things. We see
them so much more clearly.’’ With this response he shifted the focus from her expression
of future-related regrets over the many things she would like to do back to the past-related
regrets that she had begun to raise when she mentioned that she had been thinking about
the arguments, feuds, heartaches, tears and worries of her earlier years. She accepted this
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subtle shift in focus, noting, ‘‘If we could only relive parts of our lives again,’’ to which he
responded, ‘‘We might do some things differently.’’ With this response, she began to reveal
an incident that she deeply regretted:
I’ve always been a church woman, Reverend. I’m a Baptist. I’ve always taken my
church work seriously. I’ve had more preachers in my house to eat than—well, than
anyone should. I’ve always thought the church was so important—with our world
and all. People just don’t know how important. (Here there was a brief interruption.
Tim came in and apparently was going to sit down but, sensing our mood, left.) I’ve
been a Christian woman, Reverend, but I could have been better.
He said, ‘‘You feel there might have been times when you could have been different?’’ and
she went on:
Yes. I know you’ll think it’s silly, Reverend, but for a long time I’ve been president
of our ladies group; almost twenty years, I guess. And once, when the girls were
going to consider another president, I–I did a terrible thing. I let them think the other
woman was… not good enough. I told a lie about her and they didn’t elect her. Now
she’s gone, poor soul…. And I keep thinking about it. It wasn’t very Christian, was
it, Reverend?
This confession, prefaced by the comment that he would probably find it silly, indicates
that there was a specific action of hers that she regrets, an action that she now experiences
as incongruent with the person—or self—that she has tried to be.
Up to this point in the conversation, the pastor has followed the suggestion by Michael
Nichols that Carlin quoted in his sermon that, to really listen, one needs to ‘‘suspend
[one’s] own agenda.’’ Her confession, however, and perhaps her use of the word ‘‘Reverend’’ in her concluding question, seems to make him conscious of the fact that this is a
pastoral visit, after all, and a pastor needs to provide reassurance. So he begins to adopt the
voice of authority:
Being a Christian is very difficult. It seems to me that we are bound to fail once in a
while. But that’s the greatness of our faith; there is always room for failures. Forgiveness is part of God’s nature.
He says that ‘‘she looked back at me; she seemed tired’’ and then she replied, ‘‘I guess we
all sin… at times; and I suppose forgiveness is ours.’’
Noting that her reply was rather tentative, Capps (2002), in his earlier discussion of the
case, suggested that this was because the minister viewed her ‘‘confession’’ as a matter of
guilt, which prompted him to assure her that forgiveness was available, and did not
recognize that there was also ‘‘a strong element of shame involved,’’ that, ‘‘in fact, shame
is the dominant emotion’’ (p. 96). He added:
Mrs. A’s action is an offense to her perception of herself as a ‘‘good Christian.’’ She
is ashamed of herself for having resorted to lying about the other woman in order to
retain the presidency. She takes little comfort in the fact that it was an impulsive,
unpremeditated reaction to the threat of losing her position. She has had to live with
this blot on her character ever since, with the injury to self that it has caused. Shame
is the major reason she has been ‘‘thinking about’’ this seemingly trivial episode,
working it over in her mind as she anticipates the end of her days on this earth.
Trying to think of the more beautiful things of this world she has found herself
reflecting instead on this ‘‘silly’’ matter. In fact, this seemingly trivial episode
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threatens her belief that life has any real meaning. She feels like laughing at life’s
incongruities (pp. 96–97).
Although Capps makes a valid point, neither he (with his focus on shame) nor the pastor
(with his focus on guilt) take note of the fact that Tim’s mother is expressing regret over a
past action (commission) which she cannot do anything about because it is too late to
change the outcome (the presidential election) and too late to tell the other woman that she
is sorry for what she did (the other woman has since died).
The pastor may well have found her response less than he had hoped for, because at this
point he began to bring the conversation to a close. He said, ‘‘Even our Lord’s Prayer
stresses forgiveness. Sometimes we forget what the words mean, we say it so often. Have
you ever really thought about them?’’ He then proceeded with the prayer itself. Evidently,
there was something about the prayer that responded to her regret, for she said when he had
finished, ‘‘Even the Lord’s Prayer sounds different now.’’
Her comment could mean two very different things. On the one hand, the ‘‘now’’ may
reflect the fact that she has just told the pastor about an episode in which she wronged
another woman and she feels better for having confessed to her wrongdoing (past regret).
On the other hand, the ‘‘now’’ may reflect a continuation of her initial thoughts about how
she knows she is dying and she regrets that she will not be around to see the flowers next
year (future regret). The first interpretation would be supported if she heard the prayer as
the pastor intended that she would. After all, it includes the theme of forgiveness (‘‘And
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’’) that he had been trying to emphasize and
it makes specific reference to temptation (‘‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil’’), and wasn’t it the case that the episode she had just revealed an example of how
one may, despite one’s better character and judgment, succumb to temptation in the heat of
the moment? As Tomer and Eliason (2008) point out, ‘‘A particular type of regret related to
actions involves cases in which one succumbs to temptation,’’ preferring in this instance
‘‘his or her short term or momentary gain over long term gains’’ (p. 161). We think,
however, that the second interpretation is closer to the mark, that her awareness of the fact
that she is dying changes everything and this being so, ‘‘Even the Lord’s Prayer sounds
different now.’’ We will return to this point and its implications later.
Following his recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, the pastor got up and taking her hand, he
said, ‘‘I’ll see you again soon, and we’ll talk some more.’’ She replied, ‘‘That will be fine. I
hope I haven’t bored you,’’ to which he answered, ‘‘Certainly not. Now, good-bye.’’ She
said, ‘‘Good-bye, God bless you.’’ These final, brief interchanges may suggest that persons
who relate their regrets to others may often feel that they are boring the other because, after
all, ‘‘What’s done is done’’ and ‘‘Why cry over split milk?’’ Perhaps, too, she was recalling
the fact that like his many predecessors, the pastor had come to her house, ostensibly at
least, for dinner with Tim, and she felt that she had detained him from what he had come
for. Or maybe she sensed that what Phil said to Bob—‘‘You don’t regret anything yet’’—
was also true of the young pastor, and this being the case, he couldn’t truly listen to—much
less empathize—with what she was trying to say to him.
The latter impression is supported by what the pastor said in his brief concluding
comments on the case:
This woman faces what may be the greatest of all problems—death. To react with
courage and insight is exceedingly difficult. Her reflection has given her a picture of
herself as one who has tried at her religion and failed a few times. She feels guilt over
these failures and needs reassurance. I feel that I did not stress the forgiveness of God
enough. She died about twelve days after my visit, before I could see her again (p. 62).
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His observation that death ‘‘may be the greatest of all problems’’ seems rather fatuous to
us. We would want to say (trying not to sound sarcastic), ‘‘How true.’’ We also have our
doubts that a person who was really listening to what she was saying would have concluded that her ‘‘reflection has given her a picture of herself as one who has tried at her
religion and failed a few times.’’ We think, rather, that her reflection has given her a sense
of the absurdity of her life, of how silly it all seems when one looks back on it and thinks of
the arguments, feuds, heartaches, tears, and worries. In retrospect, as she says, ‘‘it’s all so
futile.’’ The story she tells about the importance she placed on getting reelected president
of the ladies group is a case in point: To retain her position she sullied the reputation of the
other woman, and now, the ‘‘poor soul’’ is gone, and I’m about to join her.
The fact that he thinks that he could have helped her is also a reflection—a direct
outcome—of his failure to suspend his own agenda and genuinely listen to what she was
trying to tell him. He thought that she was feeling guilty about the times when she had
failed to live up to her religion and this being so, that she needed reassurance that God has
forgiven her. But her rather tired and understated response to his efforts to locate her
reflections in this sin/forgiveness interpretive frame—‘‘I guess we all sin… at times; and I
suppose forgiveness is ours’’—suggests that this was not the pressing issue that he assumed
it to be, that her reflections were of a rather different kind. The issue was not guilt, but the
absurdity of it all, including the very absurdity of trying so hard to be a Christian woman,
whatever that means.
In his comments on the case, Paul E. Johnson agrees with the pastor that the issue is one
of sin and forgiveness. It’s just that he doesn’t think the pastor handled it very well, and
believes that he knows why: the pastor was anxious and his anxiety adversely affected his
reactions and responses. Having noted that the pastor evidences anxiety concerning the
topic of grief, Johnson suggests that the pastor reveals a similar anxiety in his response to
the woman’s confession of sin:
Mrs. A. confesses a sin which has stained her memory and caused her grief. Again
the pastor is anxious in facing guilt, unable to rest in the moment of earnest confession to accept her anguish and uphold her need to complete the full circle of
penitence. He hastens to reassure her before accepting the heavy burden of anguish
she bears, and instead of helping her unburden and complete the confession, he
represses it by eager reassurance (pp. 62–63).
Thus, Johnson disagrees with the pastor’s feeling that he should have given the woman
more reassurance. Or, perhaps more accurately, he is troubled by the pastor’s haste and
eagerness in this regard. He continues:
There will be a time to speak of the wondrous love of God which offers us forgiveness to save us and lift us from the depths of intolerable guilt; and there will be a
time for prayer together of rejoicing in the absolution of our wounds and the healing
of this forgiving love. But evidently she has more to say in her confession. Do we
need to close the door so quickly? (p. 63).
Or, to invoke the biblical text that informed Carlin’s sermon: the pastor should have
been quick to listen and slow to speak; instead, he was quick to speak and slow to listen.
On the other hand, isn’t Johnson engaging in a bit of hyperbole when he speaks of ‘‘the
depths of intolerable guilt’’? After all, Tim’s mother has not committed a terrible crime.
She has ‘‘told a lie.’’ Nor is it necessarily true that ‘‘she has more to say in her confession.’’
What more is there to say? She told a lie about the other woman, the lie enabled her to
retain her position as president, and that’s pretty much the whole extent of it. It’s not the
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enormity of her sin but the absurdity of the episode that makes it difficult not to think about
it. And this, we might add, is how Carlin views the Christmas Day episode in which a
rather inconsequential conversation about his uncle and grandmother prompted his father
to leave the room and his mother to cry, and left Carlin himself feeling a great deal of
regret for having allowed himself to get drawn into—emotionally hooked by—the topic of
conversation.
The Pastoral Case in the Light of Regret Therapy
In his earlier discussion of this case, Capps (2002) had noted that self-disclosure is generally helpful to persons who are troubled about an experience of shame (p. 98). This point
is also relevant to regret. However, the case, especially the comments by the pastor and
Johnson, also prompts us to ask whether self-disclosure is automatically helpful or does
something in addition need to happen in order for the self-disclosure to be truly helpful? In
describing the goals of their ‘‘regret therapy,’’ Mannarino et al. (2008) imply that disclosure of regret for past actions or inactions is not an end in itself but a means toward
other ends: ‘‘Our work with clients involves helping them to think and behave in more
positive ways in their daily lives’’ but ‘‘is also directed toward the ultimate goal of helping
them to appreciate their own worth and personal meaning through their struggles and
growth’’ (p. 330). Through case examples, they explain how they seek to achieve these
goals.
They begin, however, by drawing on an early essay by one of the authors of this article
(Capps 1983), and note that, according to him, ‘‘the telling of one’s life story can become a
parabolic experience’’:
Capps proposes that life stories serve as myths, metaphors, or parables that reveal
many universal ideas. Many people, in his view, learn the following lessons about
life in the universe from their own life stories: (a) being human universally means
living with the reality that all humans make mistakes; (b) the acknowledgment and
acceptance that one is human and makes mistakes inevitably changes a person [for]
after recognizing and facing one’s mistakes, an individual is no longer the same
person—the person has evolved and grown; and (c) a human who confronts one’s
own mistakes holds a greater responsibility for living a better life in the present and
for sharing one’s hard-won wisdom with others, to help others evolve and grow as
well (p. 336).
In this summary of Capps’ notion of the ‘‘parabolic experience,’’ the authors have
adapted this idea to their work as regret therapists. This idea, however, leads them to
suggest that what makes an experience a ‘‘parabolic experience’’ is that it involves a
‘‘reframing’’ (Goffman 1990; also Capps 1990). To illustrate how a client’s regrets can be
reframed, the authors cite the following case:
Vanessa’s husband recently died of lung cancer, following years of heavy cigarette
smoking and lack of follow-through of doctor’s recommendations. Vanessa regrets a
decision she made several years ago to stop nagging her husband about his health and bad
habits. Although she continued to cook healthy meals and practice good health habits on
her own, she stopped criticizing her husband and giving him the cold shoulder whenever he
lit up a cigarette. Her past-related regret results in guilt and depression. With the help of
her therapist, she role-plays scenarios with her deceased husband and uses role-reversal
with herself (played by the therapist). She is eventually able to recognize her own human
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limitations. She is able to forgive herself and her husband, to believe that her husband
would have forgiven her as well, and to grow from her painful experience so that she feels
ready to face life without her husband (p. 338).
The authors note that Vanessa’s therapist used reframing techniques to help her see her
experience from a different perspective. They suggest that reframing involves helping a
client reevaluate and perhaps revise an interpretation of a particular situation or a perspective of self. Thus,
In Vanessa’s case, she was helped to reframe her picture of herself as a neglectful
spouse, and to see that she had been a mature adult who took care of herself, modeled
healthy behavior, respected the real boundaries between her and her husband, and
nurtured a positive relationship between them. In addition, returning to Capps’s
(1983) model of the parabolic experience, through sharing the story of her life with
support from her therapist, Vanessa is able to recognize her own humanity and to
grapple with the meaning of such universal experiences as love and loss (p. 338).
Back to Tim’s mother: Is the dissatisfaction that the pastor and Paul Johnson express
with how the case ended due to an implicit realization that a reframing did not appear to
have taken place? Could the pastor, for example, have invited her to take on the role of the
woman whom she had lied about and imagine what the other woman, looking down on this
scene from heaven, might say to her?
Another possibility and one that would take more seriously the fact that the prospect of
imminent death is itself a parabolic experience, is that the reframing began when Tim’s
mother was informed that she was dying. When she was moved to the living room and her
hospital bed was placed near the window so that she could see out by turning her head to
one side, she began to come to terms with the very fact that she had a month or less to live.
This very fact evoked regrets. There were the future-related regrets of not being able to do
the ‘‘many things I want to do’’ and not being around to see the flowers and, we would
assume, the other things that she values, appreciates, and loves. There were also the pastrelated regrets associated with the ridiculous arguments, feuds, heartaches, tears, and
worries. When one faces death, one sees these experiences and one’s emotional investment
in them in a new light. An illustrative example is the importance she placed on retaining
the presidency of the ladies group when ‘‘the girls were going to consider another
president.’’
We suggest, therefore, that the reframing had been going on prior to the pastor’s visit
and that it continued after his departure. This was not, however, a reframing with which the
pastor was comfortable because it centered on the dying woman’s perception of the
absurdity of life. In support of this reframing, she cites the biblical phrase, ‘‘Vanity of
vanities! All is vanity.’’ Because he was unprepared for these reflections, we would not
have expected the pastor to have been able to enter immediately into this reframing, but we
might have expected, as she herself did, that in light of his war experience he could have
followed her thoughts with greater sensitivity—and accuracy—than his responses seem to
reveal. One useful aid in this regard would have been a greater familiarity with the verses
in Ecclesiastes that precede the familiar words: ‘‘Vanity of vanities; all is vanity’’ (Eccles.
12:8). Here they are in full, and presented, appropriately, we believe, in poetic form:
Remember your creator in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near
when you will say, ‘‘I have no pleasure in them’’;
before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars
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are darkened and the clouds return with the rain;
in the day when the guards of the house tremble,
and the strong men are bent, and the women
who grind cease working because they are few,
and those who look through the windows see dimly;
when the doors on the street are shut,
and the sound of the grinding is low,
and one rises up at the sound of a bird,
and all the daughters of song are brought low;
when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road;
the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along,
and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home,
and the mourners will go about the streets;
before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken,
and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel
broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth
as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.
In Words of Delight, Ryken (1992) suggests that this passage is a highly metaphorical
depiction of old age. The image ‘‘the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are
darkened’’ refers to weak eyesight; ‘‘clouds [that] return after the rain’’ is an allusion to tears
from eyestrain; ‘‘the keepers of the house that tremble’’ are shaking hands and arms; ‘‘the
strong men that are bent’’ are stooped shoulders; and the loss of teeth is figurately described
as ‘‘grinders cease because they are few.’’ Weak eyes are pictured in the figure of ‘‘the
windows are dimmed’’; weak hearing is evoked by ‘‘the doors on the street that are shut’’;
the ‘‘almond tree [that] blossoms’’ relates to white hair; and the allusion to ‘‘the grasshopper
[that] drags itself along’’ refers to the loss of sprightliness in walking (pp. 326–328).
Even if Ryken were mistaken about specific images and their metaphorical meanings,
the poet is obviously thinking about advanced age and therefore of the imminence of death.
He admonishes his reader to ‘‘remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the
days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in
them,’’’ and he concludes with the familiar allusion to the human body as ‘‘dust [which]
returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.’’
What if the pastor had read these biblical words in place of his recitation of the Lord’s
Prayer, and then paused and waited for Tim’s mother to respond? We (and our readers) can
only guess at what she might have said, but we suspect that their conversation would not
have ended quite so abruptly and that she would not have expressed concern that she may
have bored the pastor. Whatever she may have said, we would have wanted to say that,
with all due respect to the poet who penned these words, we ourselves do not believe that
‘‘desire fails,’’ at least not in her case (see Capps 2008, pp. 193–210). This being so, we
would have added that we can feel the tension she herself is feeling when she says, ‘‘I
really don’t mind dying, in a way. It’s just that there are so many things I want to do’’; and
then, when the pastor, on being questioned, confirms that he has, indeed, served in war, she
says again, ‘‘Then you know, Reverend, how I feel about dying! I really don’t mind at all,
yet I don’t want to; there are so many things to do.’’ The grasshopper drags itself along
precisely because desire does not fail. And because it does not, she finds herself needing to
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come to terms with her regrets, especially about the fact that her life is about to end (future
regrets).
Conclusion
If this article were a sermon, we would feel some pressure to go full circle and return to the
beginning by concluding with a few associations between this pastoral case and Carlin’s
story about the Christmas Day dinner episode. We might point out that both involved the
death of a woman, and we might go on to note that a common theme was cheating: Carlin’s
grandmother was presumably cheated by his uncle out of her money, a woman was cheated
out of the presidency of the ladies group because another woman had told a lie about her,
and the woman who told a lie was cheated by her cancer of several, perhaps many, years of
life. We might also note that Tim’s mother alluded to the arguments and feuds that had
occurred in her life, and Carlin has related such an argument, one that took place on
Christmas Day, no less.
This is not a sermon, however, so we think it may be more useful to return to that mythical
hospitality suite in Wichita, Kansas, and suggest that although Phil is in the lubricant
business, he treats Bob in a very pastoral way. He tells the younger man that he has already
done plenty of things to regret—he just doesn’t know what they are yet—but when he
discovers them, he will ‘‘see the folly’’ in what he has done and will wish he ‘‘had it to do
over.’’ But he will know that he can’t do it over again ‘‘because it’s too late.’’ So he will
‘‘pick that thing up’’ and carry it with him as a reminder ‘‘that life goes on.’’ And so it does.
On the other hand, Phil doesn’t simply want to leave it there. It’s not enough to say that
we will pick up our regrets and carry them with us. No, Phil, a man who is recently
divorced and is therefore carrying his own burden of regrets, believes that by recognizing
and coming to terms with our regrets we will ‘‘attain character because honesty will reach
out from inside and tattoo itself all across your face.’’ This, we believe, is itself a reframing, one that is especially liberating in cases, like that of Tim’s mother’s lie about the
other woman’s character, when it is too late to make amends. What Phil says to Bob
applies equally to Tim’s mother; and perhaps, in this sense, the pastor was right when he
said he ought to have given her more reassurance—not, however, the reassurance that her
sins were forgiven (she knew that already) but that he could see the character in her face,
character revealed in the very fact that she has continued thinking about what she had done
to the other woman.
If, in this sense, the pastor was right, so, too, was Capps when he suggested that the case
is about shame, for shame is what we feel when we do not live up to the standards we have
set for ourselves, the person we aspire to be. No doubt, if the pastor had looked carefully,
he would have noticed the subtle hints of shame on Tim’s mother’s face when she told him
about the incident involving the other woman. If he had noticed them, then the honesty that
reached out from inside and tattooed itself all across her face would have shone even
brighter. Then, perhaps, he would even have considered it significant that she smiled when
she spoke of the old arguments and feuds and of her impending death, as if to say that she
could see the humor in it all, even as Carlin can see the humor in the fact that a conversation about his deceased grandmother and greedy uncle led to the disruption of his
family’s Christmas dinner.
Finally, the relevance to this pastoral case of Phil’s observation about it being ‘‘too late’’
to do over invites us to conclude with another sermon. Earlier, we mentioned Carlin’s
observation that the movie ‘‘feels like a parable’’ to which ‘‘one can keep returning and
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learning from it,’’ and we also discussed Mannarino, Eliason and Rubin’s suggestion that
such incidents of regret are ‘‘parabolic experiences.’’ In his sermon on listening titled
‘‘Listening to the Parables of Jesus,’’ Paul Ricoeur (1978) refers to the parables that an
earlier biblical scholar, Joachim Jeremias, called the ‘‘It May Be Too Late’’ parables (Matt.
24:36–25:13). Ricoeur specifically cites the parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, noting that it
runs ‘‘counter to actual experience where there will always be another chance…. At what
village wedding has anyone slammed the door on the frivolous maidens who do not
consider the future (and who are, after all, as carefree as the lilies of the field)?’’ (pp. 244–
245). Through this parable, Jesus invites his listeners to consider the possibility—and thus
imagine the unimaginable—that in regard to the kingdom of God, the ‘‘proper time’’ for
them to act has already passed.
This is a parable of regret. We assume that the maidens wish they had it to do over
again. But the parable indicates that it’s too late for that. On the other hand, as Carlin
suggests in his sermon, the thing about parables is that we can keep returning to them and
learning from them. This parable is no exception: it tells us that we discover God in the
very untimeliness of human affairs. And this, we suggest, is the ultimate reframing that
underwrites the reframing that Phil invites Bob to consider, and that we invite our readers
to consider too. Just because it all took place in a mediocre hotel in Wichita, Kansas, is no
reason to look down our noses at what happened there.
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