NO REGRITS, FOR TWO: (REGRET VS. GUILT)

The phrase “No Regrets” has always seemed exasperatingly short-sighted to me (like I can’t live and think compulsively about it at the same time?), more suitable for stitching on a pillow, barmop or apron than for actual daily consumption.

Let’s face it, a stitch is something painful you get in your side when you’re running; a mantra should be something you can do standing stock-still.

I don’t want to scoff at mantras or affirmations—they work. Whatever they are and whatever we call them, about everything we say long enough to ourselves becomes true, except, “I am taller with good legs and perfect pitch”—but I would feel fraudulent if I said I can tolerate this concept of “No Regrets.” This doesn’t make me a fraud—it means I think it can’t be done.
It means I’m not sure I want to.

Now, I have Norman Vincent Pealed away at a mess-hall pile of negative potatoes small and large in the past few years, and I invest fully in the power of positive thinking, but currently I am torn in little pieces, like a crisp head of romaine, wrangling this concept of Regret. Because I don’t think it’s a question of semantics and stresses, syllables and hard and soft beats--I think it’s just a matter of timing. Even term is a question of time.

Like most words attributed to the dark little weevil pile of human motivation, the endlessly composting heart and festering places of an eggshell-mind, there are words people misconstrue, and exchange and interchange, which have absolutely no business being so. Whether sound-alikes or dopplegangers, Guilt and Regret--like Tuna and Chicken of the Sea—are terms which have similarities but which--sorry Charlie--don’t mean the same thing at all (if that were true, I’d be out of a dissertation some day). And this is where the confusion…um...lies.

It is generally recognized and even screened onto boardwalk t-shirts in a variety of menacing neon colors that the difference between Regret and Guilt is action (but if overthinking your actions is a crime, I’m sunk): the belief being that Regret is about things not done, while Guilt is for things under-done or well-done, but oh fuck, we really shouldn’t have done.

I’m not sure what I think about this—and read this next in a breathy, sarcastic tone:“I have never regretted the things I’ve done, only the things I haven’t done.”

This might be true, the quote certainly forwards around the Internet like a cheerful airborne noxious event, the kind of thing given pixilated credence by being falsely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt or Thomas Edison or even Mae West (ask yourself if you believe Mae West really talked that much, or if only a few people could have possibly said all the seminal things, in convenient Facebook application form).

Because then it sounds like maybe we could just collapse these terms into one Gold Medal All-Purpose, greased and floured pan that’ll turn out our perfect definition every time:

“Regret is all the things I wanted to do most, but didn’t because I felt too Guilty even thinking about them and was paralyzed by thinking about how I could realistically get away with doing them or making them a reality anyway.”

Sounds too easy, probably a hoax.

Nope, we need two different words and we need to keep them very, very separate: we need Guilt to keep us in line; we need Regret to keep us coming back to the starting line. There is a big difference between plaintive and just plain sad, linguistically speaking.

I love my Regrets because, like anything worth considering on a humid summer afternoon, there all the possibilities for self-discovery lie.

I “trust” my readers, a lot some would say. I serve you my underpinnings and my foibles and I just go ahead and tell you the ways to thrill me or undo me, because then, though you may disappoint me or think you know me, you probably won’t surprise me. So now you know: I have Regrets.

Regret is a word with a melancholic, wistful tinge to it—Regret is a word with longing. It is not entirely painful or ugly; in fact damnnnn, it has pretty good mouth feel. You can feel a savoring fondness for regret that you just can’t feel with guilt, which you want to flick away in fear and with haste, like a leech from a very small pair of swimming trunks. In fact, you can’t feel anything with Guilt but more Guilt. Guilt is just an old fact we can’t change about ourselves, limiting as hanging onto an expired racing form with all the wrong picks.

Listen up, all you GRE-takers~

Guilt : death, screech, scab, hector, roach AS Regret : rue, moan, spark, sparrow, rustle

...and Yes, I am known to love the sounds of just the latter.

If it sounds like I am Romancing regret, so be it. The definition of a "Romantic" is not one who makes things bigger than they are, it’s one who makes them bigger than we ever thought they could be.

So, Regret is about longing—a self-fufilling gerund if ever there was one. It’s about the possibility of becoming bigger—that’s why it’s called a longing, not a shortcoming. Guilt is stunting, but Regret?—stretches us to be better, greater, longer, longing versions of ourselves.
Sure, Guilt’s a familiar recipe: it’s Peeps in the microwave for 30 seconds, it’s predictable results, while Regret is absolutely wondrously unpredictable, ineffable. Regret isn’t all the things we didn’t do—it’s all the things we might still do, and all the things we might be, if we gave ourselves the chance. And for that reason, it is a vastly superior state to Guilt; for that reason alone we need it.

Put another way, Guilt is grocery store ice cream. I open the freezer case of Guilt at Shoppers Food Warehouse, Westminster, and I’m greeted with a well-lit environment maintained by a careful, evenly chilled temperature. If I choose to get something out of there, well, I know what I’m going to get: stale rows of cardboard half gallons of predictable chocolate chip and plain old vanilla bean guilt. One half gallon=20 hours on the treadmill to pay it off—and you can pay it off. Guilt is an open and shut case. Even Karma can be repaired, given enough time. I mean, for heaven's sakes, they sell kits on the Internet.

But Regret…Regret is located in the monstrous old chest freezer in the deepest part of where you live. You go down to the damp cellar and force that one open, you break the hasps for good-- you may never get it closed again. But the homemade stuff is maddeningly good in there, so unlike anything else, that it calls to you and you just have to do it anyway.

Guilt is broadcast, it’s public domain and transgression like holocausts, genocides and abuses. Regret is a private communication between one or at the most two people—Regret says--thank you, Elvis Costello--You Belong To Me.

Since Regret is about longing, I am giving it points just for being forward-thinking, just for sheer momentum. Guilt is a very stuck, guttural, one-time word we fell ourselves with at the knees. You’re not getting anywhere with Guilt—it won’t let you—but Regret implies the possibility something new and different could still happen, and really, the point of words is that they go somewhere. I like that in my words.

the nature of confession
I’ll be a Confessor of anything I am Guilty of and hand it to you, but don’t ask me to give up my Regrets— they get me up in the morning just to see if they’re still there.
No one should have to give up their longings or their possibilities.

And you know, as far as where things lead, I can’t resist a good breadcrumb trail. It’s not where the breadcrumbs lead, it’s who they lead back to which is interesting to ponder (even if it's just ourselves), imagining the palm and sweat-slick knob of the wrist of the breadcrumb-owner. How did he scatter them? Was it a big, cruel casual spray all at once, or a determined parsing of the crumbs, plucked from a coveted cupped pile, careful, a little at a time, lovingly, line by line?

What we call a thing to ourselves is important—no matter what the rest of the world calls it. The definitions we make for ourselves and ways we make a word mold up against or even between our bodies so it will never, ever fit someplace else but in that space between those bodies again. No need to fear them…they’re just…words—right?

But certain terms are ridiculously impersonal and utterly unsuitable for personal use, and it seems to me should be abandoned immediately--if we are smart, we keep the words and make new definitions for ourselves. Grits do not taste gritty, for example--or shouldn’t—now do they?

Regrits, or instant grits, or Guilt are instant Anti-Gratification—same thing as the grocery store ice cream. You know they will leave you with "that taste" in your mouth. True longingly satisfying Regret takes time and space--no instant grits sold or bought here. All things are questions of time and the little tiny spaces in between: whether it’s the old moisture trapped under the glass of the stopwatch, the wriggly things under the sundial on the garden floor, the bits of sand rubbing up against and slipping past each other, endlessly turning at sixes and sevens in the hourglass.

Okay, all you Dread Pirates Roberts, let me sum up: Regret is necessary if the past has any hope of not repeating itself, or of creating itself from its ashes—of morphing into something new.

my, what a long cord you have
So the kitchen Regret line is ringing off the hook—so what? Regret’s lovely and circular, and nothing at all to fear. It’s just that old rotary business again, ringing away. No voice mail, no answering machine, no impersonal text function available, no off position for the ringer. It will keep ringing until it’s answered by your own hand. Personally?--I love the sound of it, I love that voice I know so well on the other end and the electric, frizzly charge running all along my arm when I lift it off the cradle, gently & expectantly, but that’s just me.

Oh, and I Regret to inform you, in the psychic phoneline to your true self?--only you can answer the call.

NO REGRITS, FOR TWO:

I have always found there’s almost no situation which can’t be improved by a clean, hard sweat, a big dose of the sun, a long eurybathic dunk in the waters of self-awareness, full-fat dairy products and a rasher of bacon—but that is my personal formula and it’s taken years and years of tinkering. Notice I say the situation can be “improved;” I never say, “eradicated.” I never said I wanted to.

A simple breadcrumb veil--butter and crumbs and some fresh flat-leaf parsley under the broiler for a minute—would also be appropriate for this dish. Start collecting your breadcrumbs now, possibly years before you expect to put this on the table.

INGREDIENTS
1 lb. center thick-cut cured bacon
2 giant handfuls fresh spinach, mostly de-stemmed and pulled apart
4 long green onions, sliced into rings, with greens
Purple basil leaves
1 cup slow-cooking grits
4 cups half and half
4 tbs/one half-stick unsalted butter
Grated salt cube or generous smattering of sea salt
Ground black pepper

METHOD
Fry the bacon as you like
Very slowly, melt the butter in a big saucepan, add and bring up the half and half to scald; immediately reduce heat to low.
Add the grits, stir.
Keep the heat low, stir, stir, stir the pot.
Wait for consistency. It's hard to tell how long this could take.
Season with the salt and pepper.
Divide into two large bowls and top with the torn spinach, scallions and basil, crumble the bacon over top or make a festive timbale, ever-heavenward as here.

I forgot about the pine nuts, but of course those work too. They’re a natural accompaniment to most foods; I do love them, even when they sit on a cookie sheet, nicely toasted, seemingly, "accidentally" forgotten.

Eh, I can always find a place to work the pining into a later dish.

NEXT UP, reader essays: "MANNA: Man cannot live by words alone."

drawing, courtesy of chestofbooks