I got to thinking about regret. Regret is sorrow one might feel over some wrong done, some unfortunate choice, or something lost.

I have seen it in marriages when one person leaves, citing the destructive behaviour of the other, leaving the other to grieve the loss on many levels, one of which includes wishing he or she could take back the unhelpful things they had been doing that drove their spouse away.

I have experienced it when I’ve looked back on my life and wished I had done something differently, chosen more wisely, or just not done something at all.

At its most simple and concrete level, this is what a child feels when he or she reaches toward forbidden candy and then gets punished.

At that level it’s genuine sadness, but its sadness that they got caught, not the kind of repentance that comes from insight.

On a more sophisticated level, it includes the realisation that one has brought on the suffering oneself through acts of commission as well as omission. I left the cheese melting on the bread under the broiler inside the oven until the smoke came rolling out and there was nothing but a charred biscuit left. I regretted that. I left my favourite hat in the restaurant, and never got it back. I regretted that. I stuffed myself sick with pastries, and I’ve regretted that on several occasions.

There is a difference between the kind of regret that drives one inside, turned in on him or herself so that the chief focus becomes one’s own grief, and the kind of repentance that points one outside him or herself in contemplating the grief one has brought to another. That kind of regret often leads to a turn around in one’s thinking and behaviour.

That turnaround is often referred to among psychologists as “undoing”, and this type of undoing is not merely the defence mechanism that lets one off the hook for one’s offences; this type of undoing drives one to make amends, eradicate offensive behaviour, correct a deficit, or otherwise change direction in life.

In the December 2005 issue of Psychology and Aging, some psychologists reported on an interesting series of studies in which they compared quality of life to the way older adults adjusted to regret.

Researchers Wrosch, Bauer, and Scheier found that intense regret in older adults compromises their wellbeing, leading to health problems.

Older adults are more apt to lapse into depression, leading to a subjective decline. These researchers further discovered that disengaging from the undoing of regrets, coupled with the availability of future goals, could predict lower levels of intense regret among older adults, leading to a more positive experience of life.

Some regrets simply cannot be undone, and this becomes increasingly the case in older adults who just do not have the time or ability to make it happen.

In such cases, psychologists might advocate that older adults adjust internally to regretted behaviour by “changing their perceptions about regrets and accepting that regretted behaviour cannot be undone— By disengaging, the person can avoid the experience of negative psychological states associated with the inability to reach a desired goal and may free resources that can be used to achieve other important objectives.”

In other words, if you’re older, and your conscience is bothering you, perhaps you can make peace with yourself if you realise that there is no longer anything you can do about the matter, and you let it go.

This, to me, requires what some might call confession. Confession is acceptance that one has failed to meet some kind of standard. It does not have to be God’s standard; it could be the standards and expectations of other important people in one’s life. It could even be one’s own standards. Along with that, quite reasonably, could come the realisation that one has hurt or encumbered others.

How does one make confession? Obviously, if one is religious, that is something a person can accomplish with their pastor. The Catholic Church has institutionalised confession and given it a geographical place — the “confessional”.

Others do not confess to the priest as much as they do to themselves and to the significant others in their lives. They simply accept the situation as it is, or share their regret with someone else.

Perhaps they experience the regret as a “conviction” that comes from God, and they “agree” with Him about it. Having a trusted friend, in this respect, comes in handy. Some people develop what they call “accountability partners” for just such a purpose, and they commit to supporting one another so that they can cleanse themselves of such regrets and make more vocal their change of perspective and purpose.