Regrets

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, of the LDS first presidency, has told us that:

"The more we devote ourselves to the pursuit of holiness and happiness, the less likely we will be on the path to regrets."

Does that mean that we will never do anything that we're ashamed of or wish we wouldn't have done?

No.

I think that what he was saying was that when we are trying our best to do the things that will lead us to  the things that God would have us do, lead us to clean living and to the things that will make us truly happy, we will be very unlikely to be choosing things that we might later be ashamed of of wish we didn't do.

That is not to say, though, that we will live a perfect life with no mistakes.  We will not be Aristotle's phronimos and led by the scriptures.  We will definitely make the wrong choice sometimes.  However, what President Uchtdorf is saying, I believe, is that we will have no reason to do anything we regret when we are making choices guided by our decision to be happy and holy.

So, why do we have regrets?  What is it about our past that can create feelings within us that makes us not like the way we've acted?  Shouldn't we feel good about anything that we've chosen to do?  I mean, it was our own choice and we're not ashamed of who we are, are we?

The only answer that will satisfy all of these questions is a universal fact: we all sin!

Because we all sin, that means that we sometimes make choices that we know we shouldn't have.

Why would we make choices that we know won't make us happy or holy?

In one word: self-betrayal.  Ok, another word: self-deception.

We deceive ourselves about whatever it is that we are doing in a way to make it seem like we are doing what we want, but at the end of it all, we are left with regrets because we've not only not done the thing that we should have done but instead have done something that we'll regret having done (maybe it's simply and only because we did not do the thing that we should've done...).

Voila!  Regret...  What do I mean by self-deception and self-betrayal?  Ask Terry Warner.  Or, better yet, read his book, "Bonds that Make Us Free."

JPS