Sometimes we lie awake at night to regret some action of our own because the result has not been what we desired or expected. “John the Unafraid” says that “if your misfortune is not your own fault, you have much to be glad of. If it is your own fault you have more to be glad of, since you can prevent that misfortune from occurring again.” In either case, therefore, you may follow the advice given so many years ago, “Rejoice evermore.” At least it is evident that in neither case need you lose sleep over it: for, according to your light, you did what seemed to you at the time best for you to do.

For, to quote Epictetus again, it is not possible “to judge one thing to be best for me and seek another.” The thing you did, you did because it seemed best to do that, and to regret now and wish you had done something else is, in reality, to wish that you had been a different person from what you were, which is a foolish regret, or, that you had done something different from what seemed best to do. That would be a mild form of insanity. You don’t really regret that you were not insane?

It has no bearing on the case that the outcome has proved that you were mistaken. You might never have learned that your course was not best for you or for others, except by doing just as you did. Now you have that much more knowledge than you had before, and you can use it to help you another time. A man can’t do any better than he can. You cannot do more than you know, and you only know what you have learned by experience. The great majority of us learn only in the school of personal experience; the few wise ones learn some things through the experience of others, by relating or applying their own experience to the events in the lives of others. Comparing and reflecting, they come to see the close relation of act and consequence, and thus recognize the universal laws in operation.

Such wisdom may be yours, but it will not come through regretting that you did not possess it ready-made. Besides, no misfortune, whether we are ourselves directly responsible for it or not, is ever in vain. No matter how hard and almost unendurable the “misfortune” may have seemed at the time, we shall find in looking back that it was no unmixed evil. The terrible calamity has often been the turning-point in our lives. It made us pause and think, and, through the thinking, we have achieved development of which we were otherwise incapable.

Even when we do not always see this for ourselves, partly because we are not always good judges of our own development or progress, we see it plainly in the lives of others. A friend of mine once said to me of a woman who was doing a tremendous work in the world, “I remember when she was just a selfish society woman.” “What changed her?” I asked.

“Oh, she lost her only daughter very suddenly. It was a terrible blow, and her friends thought she would never recover. But she did, and those who love her best know that that heavy sorrow was really a blessing in disguise. Think what she is now!” I smiled appreciatively, for my friend was herself still smarting from a keen disappointment which she had not yet recognized as a blessing in disguise. But recognizing it in another’s life must eventually help her to see it in her own.

If our misfortune has come from a selfishness that we might have overcome, and did not, we shall not better matters by wasting time in regret. “Repentance”—which is the only emotion such a misfortune should arouse—“is to up and act for righteousness, and forget that you ever had relations with sin.” Unless we “bring forth fruits meet for repentance,” our repentance is lost, and we are indeed worse off than if we had felt none.

Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher, has spoken almost the last word on the uselessness of regret. He says: “One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to help to bring him on the right path, and might thereupon conclude (as everyone does conclude) that these affections are good things. Yet when we look at the matter closely, we shall find that not only are they not good, but on the contrary hurtful and evil passions. For it is manifest that we can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse.” It is an old Hebrew idea that we should repent in sackcloth and ashes, making ourselves miserable that we may make God happy. We forget that love cannot enjoy anyone’s misery. It were indeed a perverted mind, whether human or divine, that could derive pleasure from the discomfort or sorrow of another.

Plants grow better when the sunshine warms them, and human beings expand and develop under the sunshine of joyous reflection and effort. If you are losing sleep through dreary or hopeless regret, purge your mind of such folly, and, after a sound sleep, you will find that things look brighter.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule that sleep brings mental quiet, for some sorts of nervous sufferers are prone to depression in the morning, but it is not common among active, healthy persons. They, like well-nourished children, awake to find each day a fresh delight.

Dr. M. Allen Starr, the distinguished nerve specialist of New York, writes me that there are several explanations of the cause of such depression. He is of the opinion that those who are depressed from melancholia when they wake in the morning, are probably suffering from a toxic condition of the blood which originally produced the melancholia. This toxin, or poison, is resisted by the nervous system when it is well nourished, but has a greater effect when the nervous system is poorly nourished. He says that there is a general consensus of opinion that, during sleep, the blood vessels of the brain are contracted slightly so that the amount of blood going into the brain during sleep is less than during the waking hours. This was proved many years ago by Professor Mosso of Turin, by a series of experiments which are conclusive. When blood vessels are contracted, and less blood is going to an organ, the nutrition of that organ is less actively maintained. Hence, if a person has poison in the system, it is less restricted during sleep, has a greater opportunity to attack the nerve-cells, and thus to prevent the nutrition which is essential to the feeling of general comfort. That is the theory on which we physicians explain depression on awaking after sleep in melancholia. What is true of melancholia is probably true also of fatigue conditions and irregular conditions of health, many of which are dependent upon the existence in the blood of substances detrimental to health, either the products of indigestion or the poisons of disease. This theory explains the conditions in which a person not actively ill may awake from a sleep in a state of depression. (See Appendix A.)

Prof. Edward M. Weyer in reading the sheets of this book suggests another tentative explanation of depression upon waking: if we consider the nerve cell as stored with energy, then, if the store is maintained at normal, it is in a healthful state. The supply fluctuates somewhat during the day, but in the melancholic person it does not rise to normal even after good sleep: the less amount of carbonic acid gas eliminated during sleep leaves the system on waking at the mercy of that poisoned gas and of the chronically low nervous energy.