Frank Sinatra scored a massive hit in 1969 when he recorded Paul Anka’s adaptation of a French song that Anka entitled “My Way.” Despite reports that Sinatra personally disliked the song’s “self-indulgent” lyrics, penned by Anka, and until Sid Vicious released the definitive rendition of the song nine years later, no song has ever been more identified with Sinatra the man and the singer. Whatever one feels about the song or about Sinatra — and I must say I have always found both cloying and bumptious — it is hard to ignore the power of his performance and the defiant stance of the lyrics.
The most combative words of the song arrive at the opening of the second verse.
Regrets, I've had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
I saw it through without exemption
Think of the arrogance of this passage. The song could be titled “My Way (or the Highway).” It’s a song that is befitting the patriarch of the oligarchic Roy family in the television satire Succession, or, for the more literary-minded, the general in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ exquisite and excruciating satirical novel Autumn of the Patriarch. (I recommend both.)
Nonetheless, Anka’s lines do raise an interesting question. What is the point of regret?
To make heads or tails of regret, we will have to differentiate regret from guilt. Guilt has to do with past action or inaction we had some choice or informed agency over whereas regret refers to past action or inaction that we could neither predict nor control. In fact, the song misuses the word regret. Anka seems to be referring to actions that were taken with full knowledge of their repercussions as the third and fourth lines of the second verse indicate.
I did what I had to do
I saw it through without exemption
Clearly Anka’s singer has not experienced regret but episodes of guilt — just a few, but then again too few to mention — which Sid Vicious’ video of the song (linked at the bottom of the essay) makes clear.
So, properly understood, regret has to do with consequences from past action or inaction that we had no control over and cannot correct. In this way it has much in common with its counterpart, worry.
In the U.S., we have witnessed the proliferation of a vast anti-worry industry staffed by an army of gurus, our greatest being not the inescapable Dr. Phil or even the ubiquitous Xanax but Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot of MAD magazine and the ur anti-worrier. Neuman’s sage motto — “What, me worry?” — inspired generations of youth to release their niggling cares, relax, and read humor comics. We can learn much from him.
As Mr. Neuman’s astute bon mot suggests, worry can do absolutely nothing to improve tomorrow and only can ruin today. Like regret, worry addresses events we cannot control. My intense worry that my doctor’s appointment next week will bring bad news can have no influence over the outcome. If the doctor’s report is good, I may be flooded with relief, but I will also have wasted a week fretting for no reason. If the doctor delivers bad news, I will likely be overcome with dread — worry’s more onerous sibling — and thus my self-imposed misery increases and continues.
We may be tempted to accept regret and worry as “only natural,” which they are, but they are so as vestiges of a past that has not existed for thousands of years. Whatever evolutionary advantage they may have once provided to our distant ancestors, it is difficult to see what good they do us now. And yet, here they are, lurking in our daily lives and in our guts. Yes, they are part of our nature, but we can, with practice, consciously dispel them.
Note that worry has no agency over the future, so what, me worry? And for that matter, regret will not change the past, so why regret? Indeed, both regret and worry can overwhelm our capacity to correct negative experiences, as in the case of regret, or avoid them, as in the case of worry.
In the end, and with all due respect to the talented Mr. Anka, Mr. Neuman’s sentiment is the more sagacious. Anka’s lyrics coldly dispense with past error as a meaningless inconvenience while Neuman’s motto is more nuanced — a simple rhetorical question cum statement of resolve. Under Neuman’s schema, each of us can still look on the future, near and distant, while leaving room to address but not anguish over it. In contrast, Anka’s expression of non-regret cum guiltlessness does not allow for concern or correction at all. It is brutal in its irresponsibility and its disregard for the damaged world that the narrator is leaving behind.
Living a life without regret or worry is a worthy pursuit, but a life with no concern for consequences — past or future — is an empty one marked by emotional self-isolation and hard-hearted self-regard, all set to the accompaniment of a treacly melody. The choice really is simple: reject the vapid Paul Anka/Frank Sinatra/Sid Vicious bravado and its saccharine melody and embrace your inner Alfred E. Neuman. What, Me Worry?
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Two Sides, One Coin