Something Understood

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Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Regret

Embracing the Classical

Regret

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Regret

Mark Tully asks if it is right to live with regret, or better to get over our mistakes.

Mark Tully asks if it’s right to live with regret, or better to get over our mistakes. Can we be immobilised by self-pity at one extreme, but wilfully insensitive at the other?

Mark Tully asks if it is right to live with regret, or preferable to get over our mistakes. Can we be immobilised by self-pity at one extreme, but willfully insensitive at the other?
 
The programme features an interview with writer Erwin James, who served 20 years in prison for murder. He accepts that he will never stop regretting his crimes and seeks no forgiveness, rejecting the Christian notion of grace and a God who forgives sin. James does hope for some kind of eventual peace though, and explains how he deals with constant regret for the pain he has caused, by living the best life he can.
 
Mark Tully, with the help of Lady Macbeth and Edith Piaf, also looks at the opposite response to actions which have caused harm or distress - “What’s done is done” and “Non, Je Ne Regret Rien”. He explores, too, the middle ground where our past actions are not so terrible that they must forever be regretted, but where we might also gain from acknowledging our shortcomings and the effect they have had on others.
 
Is it ever right just to ’forget about it’ and ‘move on’ or do we owe it to the people we have hurt to acknowledge our responsibility for their pain?
 

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