Anton Savage: My turn as a dime-store Simon Cowell continues to haunt me

Originally published in the Business Post.

I like guilt. I’m fuelled by it. And I don’t understand those who live without it. I recently interviewed a (very) successful man who described how his work addiction had prevented him spending a lot of time with his kids when they were young and how he felt he missed out on their childhood.

I asked the obvious question “do you regret that choice?” And he got passionately Edith Piaf and declared that not only did he not regret that, he didn’t regret anything in his entire life: “I don’t believe in regrets!”

I do believe in regrets. I regularly look back from between metaphorical fingers at mistakes, wrongs, faux pas, offences and weaknesses, and cringe afresh. This serves a purpose – or at least I tell myself it does – in that if I can feel shame and embarrassment about something I did in the past, it argues that I am a better person now than whenever I did whatever it was.

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