The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

Pink begins his discussion of regret by exposing the irony that world-renowned French singer Edith Piaf championed and popularized the adage “No Regrets” in one of her hit songs, even though she struggled with poor health due to drug use and alcoholism. The song sold more than one million records, making Piaf an icon. However, because of her poor health, Piaf died three years after the song’s success.

Following Piaf’s hit single, the “No regrets” mantra that emphasizes moving forward and positivity over conscious consideration of negative emotions became pervasive in Western culture. Pink points out that musical artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Robbie Williams, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, Tom Rush, Emmylou Harris, and Eminem have also recorded songs called “No Regrets.” The mantra is also widely used in advertising.

In The Power of Regret, Pink dismantles this popular mantra by framing Piaf’s life as performance. Even though Piaf claimed to have no regrets, her life had its troubles. She bore a child at the age of 17, whom she abandoned, and experienced tumultuous relationships. She also struggled with addiction to alcohol and morphine. According to Pink, Piaf’s last words were “Every damn thing you do in this life you have to pay for” (26). These last words seem to acknowledge the pain of regret, despite the fame Piaf achieved for embracing the “No regrets” philosophy. Pink utilizes her story to illustrate how refusal to acknowledge regret is in itself regrettable because, at the end of life, one might realize they did not utilize regrets to their advantage. He revises Piaf’s last words as “Every damn thing you do in life can pay off for you” (26): Rather than abandoning regret or falling victim to it, one can use it as a tool for progress.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University who authored the 2012 book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. In the book, he explains his and others’ research about how people determine right from wrong. Pink states that The Righteous Mind informed his knowledge about moral regrets in two ways. Firstly, he learned that, rather than contemplating moral questions from various vantage points, people instead “have an instantaneous, visceral, emotional response about right or wrong” and “use reason to justify the intuition” (115). In other words, the emotional response to moral questions precedes rational consideration.

Secondly, Haidt’s book taught Pink that morality is broad and varied. Although most people believe that some actions (harming others, cheating, lying, and stealing) are wrong, opinions diverge when considering actions such as getting an abortion, marrying someone of the same gender, talking back to parents, or destroying sacred texts. This disparity in opinion is attributed to differences in backgrounds and beliefs. While some people view morality as simply not harming others, other people view morality as including more than harm, such as heeding authority and being loyal to one’s group (family, gender, race, etc.). Haidt and his colleagues refer to this idea as “moral foundations theory,” which suggests that beliefs about morality can be divided into five categories: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/disloyalty, authority/subversion, and purity/desecration.

Haidt’s research not only contributed to Pink’s understanding of the emotionally driven nature of morality and the diverse areas of morality but also provided a blueprint for the categories of moral regrets in The Power of Regret: harm, cheating, disloyalty, subversion, and desecration.