Tag: remorse

Quote of the Day

It is the untrustworthy man who distrusts others, because he judges them by himself.

“If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn’t do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.” — Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

No One Would Have Friends

He said he disagreed strongly.

I had quoted Mary Renault: “It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly” and he believed it was better to trust no one and have them prove themselves.

I was surprised he felt so strongly about it. “That’s a negative point of view!”

“Not at all,” he replied. “I avoid disappointment and get the occasional pleasant surprise. That sounds positive to me.”

“And you think everyone should be like you?”

“Of course!”

“Well If no one trusted anybody, there never would be an opportunity to find out and then no one would have any friends.”  This would have been the coup de grâce — had this conversation taken place. Before opening my mouth, I remembered that Jonathan Swift once said “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.”

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

Safe Isn’t Always Better Than Sorry!

There is a French saying: “il vaut mieux avoirs des remords que des regrets”. This loosely translates to: “it is better to be remorseful than to have regrets”. It is about choosing to do something rather than regretting not having tried.

The action may or may not turn out be right thing to do. If it was the wrong thing to do you may feel some pain or sorrow about the act.

If you did nothing, you will regret it not having tried.

The difference: Remorse you can get over, regret will stay with you forever. Remorse can torture your conscience, regrets attack your ego.

When the lizard brain is telling you better safe than sorry, ask him: Sorry enough to live with the damage to my ego?

Dictionary.com” defines ego as “the “I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought.”

Do I want to live in my head?

The psychoanalytic definition given is “the part of the psychic apparatus that experiences and reacts to the outside world and thus mediates between the primitive drives of the id and the demands of the social and physical environment.”

It’s starting to sound like “better safe than sorry” is about the id, the lizard brain, trying to kill off the ego.

If it is a sorry I can live with, then safe isn’t better than sorry.