Regret as a story theme
If you are looking for a point of emotional resonance with an original story, try these top five regrets of the dying.
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.
Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.”
They top five regrets are:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
A writer could use any of these five as the thematic foundation for countless stories or certainly ways to define specific characters. Why? Because we respond in large part to regret-themed stories because they serve as a reminder of a fundamental fact:
We only live once.
Regret is the shadow behind the herald’s call of The Hero’s Journey: “Follow your bliss.” On the one hand, we are called upon to identify that which truly enlivens us, those core aspects of our Self that absolutely need to be expressed. On the other hand, there is the very real possibility that life will get in the way of our ability to do just that.
Of course there is a whole other way to approach the theme of regret, negative emotion attached to something we did that turned out badly, a sin of commission as the Church might say. Movies like Atonement, High Fidelity, Remains of the Day, Jean de Florette/Manon des sources, even big dumb comedies like The Hangover traffic in that.
From a writing perspective, regret can be an evocative touch point, one we can mine in our stories. As a theme, don’t forget it… or you’ll regret it.
What movies can you think of that feature regret as a theme?
For more of the article, go here.
Comment Archive