Confessions of an accidental killer | Gregg Ward

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
What do you do with the things you can't take back? It's a question a lot of us avoid until we can't anymore. But even when we do face it, the advice we get is often some version of the same thing. Move on, let it go, don't be so hard on yourself. What if that advice, however well-meaning, is actually getting in the way?

**Gregg Ward** (0:34)
I was wholly responsible for what happened that night, and I always will be.
So forgiving myself is off the table. But what I always needed to know was, how do I move forward in a positive way?

**Elise Hu** (0:49)
That's author Gregg Ward, who has spent a long time wondering what we owe to the people we've hurt, what accountability really looks like, and whether there's a way to carry regret that doesn't grind you down. In this talk, he makes the case that regret isn't something to minimize or escape, but there might be a more honest and more useful way to live with it.

**Gregg Ward** (1:08)
That's the thing about regrets. We can try to ignore them. We can try to dismiss them. We can even let them overwhelm us and undermine our relationships and our work for the rest of our lives.
Or we can choose a different path forward. You can regret something and hold yourself accountable for it, but that doesn't mean you have to punish yourself for the rest of your life.

**Elise Hu** (1:33)
That's all coming up right after a short break. And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Gregg Ward** (1:48)
So there's this very famous song, I'm sure you're all familiar with it. It's called My Way by Frank Sinatra. Now, I love it. But there's one line in that song that has always bothered me. It goes like this. Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. One, regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. Now, hang on a second. I am pretty certain that Frank Sinatra had more than a few regrets, including hanging out with shady mafiosos. So there's that. But that song and society in general encourages us to minimize regret, as if they really don't have an impact on our lives. But that's just not true. For many of us, regrets are at the core of our identity and have a huge impact on our work, our relationships, and how we live our lives. I certainly have a few. Some aren't very important. I regret eating a box of donuts right before my annual physical last year.
Some are a little bit more serious. I regret not spending more time with my son after my divorce. But I have one deep regret that goes right to the heart of what I'm talking about today.
You see, I'm an accidental killer. When I was a young man, I was driving home late one night with my high school sweetheart, Michelle. And I was paying more attention to her than I was to my driving. And I went off the road, and I hit a telephone pole, and she died.
For decades after that, there were times where I was completely overwhelmed and brought to my knees by incredible guilt, paralyzing shame and sorrow and regret, a lot of self-loathing, not very much self-respect, and a desperate need to do whatever I could to pay back the life that I took.
And for many years, I thought I was the only one in this situation. I was wrong. Every single year, people in the US accidentally kill someone, and many more are seriously injured or permanently disabled because someone made an unintentional mistake, just like me. We all belong to a club that we never wanted to join. And recently, I found out that that club has a name. It's called the Hyacinth Fellowship. And last fall, I had the opportunity to attend their first annual in-person gathering in Detroit. All perfectly normal, reasonable, caring people from all walks of life coming together to try to figure out a way to move forward and to cope through their own accidental killings. One woman I met there, let's call her Marie, she was just one year out from having had a motorcyclist t-bone her car, dying instantly. And she told us that she had recently found out that two cars had collided in that exact same spot not long after her accident and both the drivers had died. And she said, her very first thought was, thank goodness they both died, because then no one has to feel the guilt. And we all nodded because we knew exactly how she felt. And one of the realizations I took away with me from that gathering is how ill-equipped we are as a society to deal with regret. Now, accidentally killing someone is very, very serious. But none of us are immune to regret. Maybe as I've been talking, some of you here have been thinking about something that happened in your life, some unintentional harm you caused someone that you truly regret, that you wish you could take back and fix somehow. The thing of it is, most of us don't talk about our regrets until maybe we're on our deathbed trying to own our mistakes and make amends. But by then it's usually too late. Or if we do talk about them, we often get some really bad advice. I remember one woman coming up to me at the funeral and saying, don't blame yourself. This isn't your fault. God wanted her in heaven. Now, I know she was trying to make me feel better. And I know she truly believed that. But at that moment, all I could think was, are you kidding me?