Repentance's raw power of

Observer

28-07-2025

There was a time when I believed that the two most powerful sentences in the English language were 'I love you' and 'I'm sorry". I now know that those words can wound, deeply, when they're contradicted by our actions. 'I'm sorry' can even insult our intelligence if regret never leads to repentance.
I was reminded of this by an unlikely source, a television show — specifically, 'The Bear", FX's hit drama about a Chicago restaurant and the small community of cooks and servers who are trying to transform a family-owned sandwich shop into a Michelin-starred culinary showcase.
'The Bear' is one of those shows that launched a thousand essays. But for those who don't know it, the series is centred on a young, talented chef named Carmen Berzatto.
If you've spent any time in food service yourself, you've probably seen exactly what's depicted on 'The Bear". At the tables, the customers enjoy a wonderful meal and a good conversation. They bask in the hospitality. But in the kitchen, the pace is brutal, emotions are raw and even the best of friends will occasionally be nose-to-nose.
Mostly, the anger is quickly forgotten. Mostly, everyone is able to push through the stress, to retain their bonds of family and friendship. But not always. Sometimes people go too far. Sometimes the chaos is too great. And sometimes a boss crosses the line from pushing an employee to breaking one. Sometimes friends do more than test friendships. They fracture them.
That's what 'The Bear' is really about: How do we live together when someone always seems to be going too far?
It's hard to watch 'The Bear' without seeing ourselves, without seeing echoes of the primal anger that is ripping our families and nation apart.
In Season 3, we can clearly see the damage Carmy has done. He has made something great, but each person in the restaurant — each person in his family — is still under terrible strain.
This terrible tension and pain can make 'The Bear' difficult to watch. Relationships are splintering across America. It's hard enough to live in a community — we are all inherently flawed, after all. Normal human failings create persistent frictions, and unless we learn to deal with and ameliorate that friction, even the best of friendships can sometimes fade.
But we're living through something else, a furious anger in which it seems people actually want to end friendships, where they want to inflict pain with their words. It's one way to demonstrate your commitment, your great and high ideological, religious or political calling. The cause demands it, and you serve the cause.
We create relational rubble and find that it's hard to live in the ruins.
In Season 4, Carmy lives in those ruins, but he decides to rebuild. And he does so through the most powerful of human reactions to sin and loss: He repents.
Let's pause here for a moment and talk about the difference between regret and repentance. Regret is the sorrow we feel for the pain we cause or the consequences we experience. Repentance, by contrast, is active. It happens when we turn away from the behaviours that caused our regret.
Rarely has a television show more clearly demonstrated the difference than 'The Bear". Time and again, the words, 'I'm sorry' — the expression of regret — are met with scepticism, at best. Carmy says those words over and over again, and you can see his friends' faces barely change. They want more than an apology.
If you haven't watched Season 4, you might want to stop reading now, but there is a single moment in the show that demonstrates the difference between regret and repentance.
Carmy realises that he is the problem. Yes, other members of his family and other people at the restaurant have their own problems, but Carmy is at the epicentre of the chaos. And in a single, extended scene in the finale, he makes that clear not just by saying he's sorry, but by turning, by changing.
He gives the restaurant back to his family, to his most valued colleague and to his closest friend — to the people he has harmed the most. The star decides to fade so that other people can shine. For a time, he seems to say, I must diminish. I must become less so that you can become the more that you are supposed to be.
At first they can't see what Carmy is doing. The mistrust is so great and the pain so deep that they can see Carmy's actions only as another betrayal — this time abandoning them when the restaurant needs his talents the most. When Carmy tells his friend and co-worker, Richie, that he's leaving, Richie feels angry, abandoned and hurt.
As clarity dawns on everyone — as they understand what Carmy is doing — warmth and love start to spread across their faces like a slow-breaking dawn. 'I missed you,' Richie says to Carmy. And when Richie knows the new partnership is real, he nods, agrees to the deal and says — using words for emphasis that we can't print in a family newspaper — 'Yes. It is an honour.' I'm such a fallen person that when I saw that scene, I admit that my first thought was of the people who needed to repent to me. But thankfully that moment passed. Instead, I came to feel a profound sense of conviction. I asked myself, 'Who have I harmed?' and — more important — 'How can I change?' At a time of extraordinary fury, we all live in a degree of pain. We all live with regrets. But hope can come from unexpected places — and perhaps a show that features scallops, pastries and Chicago beef can also teach us that only repentance can heal our broken hearts. — The New York Times