VAIN REGRETS
Thou hast been called, O Sleep! the friend of woe;
But ’tis the happy that have called thee so.
SOUTHEY.
Sometimes we lie awake at night to regret some action of our own
because the result has not been what we desired or expected. “John the
Unafraid” says that “if your misfortune is not your own fault, you
have much to be glad of. If it is your own fault you have more to be
glad of, since you can prevent that misfortune from occurring again.”
In either case, therefore, you may follow the advice given so many
years ago, “Rejoice evermore.” At least it is evident that in neither
case need you lose sleep over it: for, according to your light, you did
what seemed to you at the time best for you to do.
For, to quote Epictetus again, it is not possible “to judge one thing
to be best for me and seek another.” The thing you did, you did because
it seemed best to do that, and to regret now and wish you had done
something else is, in reality, to wish that you had been a different
person from what you were, which is a foolish regret, or, that you had
done something different from what seemed best to do. That would be a
mild form of insanity. You don’t really regret that you were not insane?
It has no bearing on the case that the outcome has proved that you
were mistaken. You might never have learned that your course was not
best for you or for others, except by doing just as you did. Now you
have that much more knowledge than you had before, and you can use it
to help you another time. A man can’t do any better than he can. You
cannot do more than you _know_, and you only know what you have learned
by experience. The great majority of us learn only in the school of
personal experience; the few wise ones learn some things through the
experience of others, by relating or applying their own experience to
the events in the lives of others. Comparing and reflecting, they come
to see the close relation of act and consequence, and thus recognize
the universal laws in operation.
Such wisdom may be yours, but it will not come through regretting that
you did not possess it ready-made. Besides, no misfortune, whether we
are ourselves directly responsible for it or not, is ever in vain.
No matter how hard and almost unendurable the “misfortune” may have
seemed at the time, we shall find in looking back that it was no
unmixed evil. The terrible calamity has often been the turning-point
in our lives. It made us pause and think, and, through the thinking, we
have achieved development of which we were otherwise incapable.
Even when we do not always see this for ourselves, partly because we
are not always good judges of our own development or progress, we see
it plainly in the lives of others. A friend of mine once said to me of
a woman who was doing a tremendous work in the world, “I remember when
she was just a selfish society woman.” “What changed her?” I asked.
“Oh, she lost her only daughter very suddenly. It was a terrible blow,
and her friends thought she would never recover. But she did, and those
who love her best know that that heavy sorrow was really a blessing
in disguise. Think what she is now!” I smiled appreciatively, for my
friend was herself still smarting from a keen disappointment which she
had not yet recognized as a blessing in disguise. But recognizing it in
another’s life must eventually help her to see it in her own.
If our misfortune has come from a selfishness that we might have
overcome, and did not, we shall not better matters by wasting time
in regret. “Repentance”—which is the only emotion such a misfortune
should arouse—“is to up and act for righteousness, and forget that
you ever had relations with sin.” Unless we “bring forth fruits meet
for repentance,” our repentance is lost, and we are indeed worse off
than if we had felt none.
Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher, has spoken almost the last word on the
uselessness of regret. He says: “One might perhaps expect gnawings
of conscience and repentance to help to bring him on the right path,
and might thereupon conclude (as everyone does conclude) that these
affections are good things. Yet when we look at the matter closely, we
shall find that not only are they not good, but on the contrary hurtful
and evil passions. For it is manifest that we can always get along
better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and
remorse.” It is an old Hebrew idea that we should repent in sackcloth
and ashes, making ourselves miserable that we may make God happy.
We forget that love cannot enjoy anyone’s misery. It were indeed a
perverted mind, whether human or divine, that could derive pleasure
from the discomfort or sorrow of another.
Plants grow better when the sunshine warms them, and human beings
expand and develop under the sunshine of joyous reflection and effort.
If you are losing sleep through dreary or hopeless regret, purge your
mind of such folly, and, after a sound sleep, you will find that things
look brighter.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule that sleep brings mental
quiet, for some sorts of nervous sufferers are prone to depression in
the morning, but it is not common among active, healthy persons. They,
like well-nourished children, awake to find each day a fresh delight.
Dr. M. Allen Starr, the distinguished nerve specialist of New York,
writes me that there are several explanations of the cause of such
depression. He is of the opinion that those who are depressed from
melancholia when they wake in the morning, are probably suffering
from a toxic condition of the blood which originally produced the
melancholia. This toxin, or poison, is resisted by the nervous system
when it is well nourished, but has a greater effect when the nervous
system is poorly nourished. He says that there is a general consensus
of opinion that, during sleep, the blood vessels of the brain are
contracted slightly so that the amount of blood going into the brain
during sleep is less than during the waking hours. This was proved
many years ago by Professor Mosso of Turin, by a series of experiments
which are conclusive. When blood vessels are contracted, and less blood
is going to an organ, the nutrition of that organ is less actively
maintained. Hence, if a person has poison in the system, it is less
restricted during sleep, has a greater opportunity to attack the
nerve-cells, and thus to prevent the nutrition which is essential
to the feeling of general comfort. That is the theory on which we
physicians explain depression on awaking after sleep in melancholia.
What is true of melancholia is probably true also of fatigue conditions
and irregular conditions of health, many of which are dependent upon
the existence in the blood of substances detrimental to health, either
the products of indigestion or the poisons of disease. This theory
explains the conditions in which a person not actively ill may awake
from a sleep in a state of depression. (See Appendix A.)
Prof. Edward M. Weyer in reading the sheets of this book suggests
another tentative explanation of depression upon waking: if we consider
the nerve cell as stored with energy, then, if the store is maintained
at normal, it is in a healthful state. The supply fluctuates somewhat
during the day, but in the melancholic person it does not rise to
normal even after good sleep: the less amount of carbonic acid gas
eliminated during sleep leaves the system on waking at the mercy of
that poisoned gas and of the chronically low nervous energy.