Lots of Regretting This Xmas, Few Are Saying “I’m Sorry.”

As we celebrate Christmas and the remainder of this holiday season, I am filled with enormous gratitude and as much joy as I can muster, as most of us have reasons to be joyful, for what we do have, despite the conspicuous chill in the air of what seems no longer a unifying American spirit we all share.

Somewhere along the way we seem to have forgotten our sense of compassion and regret, as if saying "I am sorry" is some kind of failing, and I know I've needed to remind myself that we all are human, struggling to survive, and I regret what I have taken for granted and some of the compassion I seem to have lost along the way.

As another challenging year draws to a close, I have corralled for myself and others some memorable expressions of regret that occurred in my lifetime, as a reminder that being humble is one of the greatest parts of being human.

What follows are public apologies made by President Barack Obama, President Jimmy Carter, President Lyndon B Johnson and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

BARACK OBAMA

In a January, 2014 speech about job training, President Obama ad libbed this remark:

"I promise you folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree."

An Art History Professor from the University of Texas, took issue with his remarks in a letter she wrote him, and he responded as follows:

"Let me apologize for my off-the-cuff remarks." "I was making a point about the jobs market, not the value of art history. As it so happens, art history was one of my favorite subjects in high school, and it has helped me take in a great deal of joy in my life that I might otherwise have missed."

He asked that his apology be shared with the rest of the Art History Department at UT.

JIMMY CARTER

In an interview in Playboy magazine in September 1976, Carter said,

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust, I've committed adultery in my heart many times."

While everyone I knew was making fun of him, as if we all would like to say that we have been no more promiscuous than that, it seems others were fuming he had given Playboy the time of day (clearly no one told them that every husband read that magazine just for the articles,) and it seems others took this transgression to heart, as he had, and it cost him votes with evangelicals and women but he still beat Gerald Ford. For me it was a wake-up call, that Carter would be a new type of President who wore his faith much more on his sleeve than those who preceded him- more authentic and refreshing in retrospect, than at the time.

LYNDON JOHNSON

When Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek a second term as President because he needed to focus on the business of the nation for which he had been elected, it reverberated around the world, as the first substantial concession by one of the two American Presidents, Johnson and Richard Nixon, who conducted the War in Vietnam, that had ravaged our nation and threw the world into turmoil, costing the lives of so many brave American soldiers, not to mention those of Vietnamese soldiers and so many other casualties throughout Southeast Asia.

"With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the Presidency of this country."

RUTH BADER GINSBERG

Ruth Bader Ginsberg conceded to having made a mistake in judgment during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, when she said this: "I can't imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president." A few days later came this expression of regret:

"On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them." "Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect."

We shall see if the two newest members of SCOTUS heed her warning starting Christmas time next year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Please remember generosity of spirit brings rich rewards for everyone.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia (PLEASE BE GENEROUS & SUPPORT WIKIPEDIA)