Processing Regret, Loss, and Disappointment in Life
I often think about the park bench scene in Good Will Hunting.
In one sense, it’s a scene about how relationships bring the unresolved parts of us to the surface. The scene before this shows Will (Matt Damon) employing the strategies he’s learned to protect himself, namely mocking and withdrawal. Sean (Robin Williams) is a therapist and can see it happening. But Will’s coping behaviors still trigger him because they bump into the grief, regret, and guilt he hasn’t fully dealt with. Sean then displays his own reactivity before catching himself. And by the time we see him again on the park bench, he’s in a much more grounded and integrated place. It’s suggested that in the past Sean would have dealt with the pain by numbing himself with alcohol (or with violence, similar to Will). But in this moment we see him sit with the hurt long enough to process it and, subsequently, move through it. The result is that he “slept like a baby”.
The scene is also a juxtaposition of life stages, embodied by these two men. Will represents the possibility of youth. Despite the vast array of relational scars he’s already accumulated at 20 years old, his life is open and ahead of him. The plot of the film revolves around whether he can accept this and lean into self-authorship, or let the cynicism and fear keep him stuck. Sean, on the other hand, is already inhabiting the future that emerged from his choices. For him, most of the story is already written and he’s trying to synthesize it in a way that provides meaning and a certain degree of peace. This movie came out when I was 18, so of course I related to Will. But at some point in my life I realized I’d become Sean. That’s a jarring reality to face.
It’s the processing Sean does that stands out to me. I’d suggest that in real life it’s rare for someone to work through things that quickly and in isolation. But the move he makes is an interesting one. He reframes his personal narrative as a journey that produced the whole spectrum of human experience, for which he can be grateful. And he finds goodness in the hard-earned wisdom he’s accumulated. He doesn’t just know about love and loss as concepts to be studied, he’s lived them. And you can see that he’s found a type of fulfillment and even pride in that.
There was a time in my life (closer to Will’s age) when the idea of a mid-life crisis was a just a ridiculous trope. Now nothing makes more sense in the world to me. Life in our context typically demands we put our heads down in service of a particular life script and decades can easily pass before we take stock of things again in any meaningful way. And sometimes it takes a tragedy, or some kind of significant disruption to get our attention. When that happens, gratitude, optimism, and enlightened acceptance might be hard to come by. Regret is normal. But how do we keep it from swallowing us? We can start by naming it in an honest way, sitting with it, and processing it with others who might validate our experience.
For our group, I’d like to think about regret and loss through three particular lenses: connection, agency, and meaning. If there are particular things in your life that come to mind on this subject, ask yourself what feels the heaviest.
Connection
Is it the loss of particular relationships?
Is it the loss of a community?
Agency
Is it the closing of doors, the elimination of options?
Is it a feeling of guilt or responsibility?
Meaning
Is it that you imagined yourself differently?
Is it that you imagined your life differently?