What Regret Still Wants You to Know - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

What Regret Still Wants You to Know

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

For those who carry quiet weight and want to carry it differently.

What if regret wasn’t a flaw—but a form of fidelity? In this episode, we offer a new ethical framework for regret—not as failure or punishment, but as an afterimage of the values we didn’t know how to live by in time. Drawing from moral philosophy, trauma ethics, and narrative identity theory, we explore regret as a moral loop—a recursive signal from the past that asks not for solution, but for presence.

This isn’t a guide to letting go. It’s a meditation on how regret reshapes identity, and how moral intelligence often arrives too late to act—but right on time to witness. With quiet nods to Martha Nussbaum, Bernard Williams, Carol Gilligan, and Simone Weil, we explore the ethics of regret as an unfinished practice—less about fixing the past than keeping company with what it still asks of us.

This is a map for those who live with things they can’t explain or erase. It offers a loop of six principles—anchored in time, story, naming, and ritual—that help us carry regret not as shame, but as coherence. The essay does not promise closure. It invites return. And in that return, we find not freedom—but a different kind of integrity.

Reflections

This episode offers a slower ethic for emotional survival. It invites a listener who is not looking for relief—but for rhythm.

Here are some of the reflections that surfaced along the way:

• Regret is not what breaks us. It’s what proves we still care about what we once betrayed.
• Some values don’t vanish. They return late, asking to be named.
• Time moves forward. But meaning loops. That’s where the ache lives.
• What you regret may not be yours alone—it may be part of the structure that shaped you.
• Repair doesn’t always arrive. But accompaniment can.
• Sometimes, we don’t need to heal. We need to keep company with what still matters.
• There is no closure. But there may be rhythm. And in that rhythm, coherence.
• The most honest regret doesn’t say, “I was wrong.” It says, “I tried—and something was misaligned.”

Why Listen?

• Learn to understand regret as an expression of moral perception, not psychological error
• Explore how time, narrative, and silence shape ethical repair
• Discover six principles that form a closed-loop ethic for living with regret
• Engage with thinkers like Carol Gilligan, Simone Weil, Bernard Williams, and Martha Nussbaum on ethics, feeling, and unfinished life

Listen On:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Support This Work

If this episode stayed with you and you’d like to support the ongoing work, you can do so gently here: Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you for walking this slower path with us.

Bibliography

• Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Harvard University Press, 1982.
• Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. Routledge, 2002.
• Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. University of California Press, 1993.
• Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Bibliography Relevance

• Carol Gilligan: Reframes moral development through the lens of care, not abstract duty.
• Simone Weil: Offers a theology of attention that echoes throughout the essay’s posture toward regret.
• Bernard Williams: Introduces moral luck and the limits of clean resolution in ethical life.
• Martha Nussbaum: Grounds the emotional landscape of ethical failure in literary and philosophical detail.

Regret doesn’t want to be erased. It wants to be understood—and maybe, eventually, kept company.

#Ethics #Regret #NarrativeIdentity #MoralPhilosophy #SimoneWeil #MarthaNussbaum #BernardWilliams #CarolGilligan #TraumaEthics #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast #Fidelity #Ritual #Rupture #EmotionalRepair

 

 

 

The Loop of Regret: 

Six Ways to Stay Near What You Couldn’t Hold in Time

What follows is not a list. It’s a rhythm. A loop. Each movement folds into the next, not to solve regret, but to let it keep teaching. These aren’t steps to complete. They’re shapes you return to. Not once. But again. Each time with more breath. 

 

1. Regret as Moral Intelligence “Regret isn’t failure. It’s the body’s way of saying: that didn’t hold.” Regret begins as a signal. Not pathology. Not punishment. A moral flicker that arrives too late for the moment, but right on time for the truth. It’s how you know something mattered. Not because it hurt. But because it still does. It shows you where your values lived before you could live by them. This is fidelity, not failure. 

 

2. Regret as Identity Rupture “It’s not what you did—it’s who you didn’t become.” Regret reshapes the self. It splits your narrative, between who you thought you were and who you watched yourself become in that moment. It isn’t just about the past. It’s about the version of you that didn’t arrive. Regret interrupts the story, but it also lets you return. Not to fix the plot. To rejoin the character. 

 

3. Naming as Ethical Repair “You don’t name regret to erase it. You name it so it can stop hiding.” At some point, knowing isn’t enough. Regret wants language. Not for performance, but presence. A way to hold the pain without pressing it into resolution. When you name it, gently, honestly, you turn regret into a companion. Not a secret. 

 

4. Ritual as Holding Without Resolution “You return. Again. Not healed. Not whole. Just willing.” What can’t be solved must be carried. And carrying requires rhythm. Ritual is how you remain near what still aches without trying to end it. It isn’t dramatic. It’s quiet. Repeated. Small. The hand over the chest. The breath before sleep. The sentence you still say. Not for closure. For coherence. 

 

5. Systemic Pattern Recognition “You carry the regret. But not all of it was yours.” Regret often mirrors the design that raised you. You regret staying silent, but silence was safety. You regret not leaving, but leaving meant exile. This phase expands the pain beyond your own body, into culture, class, role, history. You begin to see the architecture. And when you do, you don’t escape responsibility. You refuse to bear it alone.

 

6. Regret as Enduring Fidelity “The ache isn’t the problem. The ache is how love returns when it’s been delayed.” This is where the loop becomes life. Where regret stops performing as closure and starts living as rhythm. You don’t need to forgive it. You don’t need to escape it. You need to stay near it, long enough to remember what it tried to protect. Long enough to become the one who didn’t abandon it. This is not the end. It’s the return. And in that return, not freedom. But shape. Your shape.