Days Of Regret

Some days I can reflect on my lifetime performance and give myself a passing grade. On those days I somehow manage to shrug off my past errors in judgement with platitudes like, I’m only human. For some reason my psyche accepts the excuse, and I carry on without the voice of regret whispering in my ear.

Some days I can’t accept a rationalization explaining my behavior, and those days are not good days.

On my days of regret it seems as if my perspective is entirely negative, and I sub-consciously dredge up events from my history that fit into the not my proudest moment category. I suppose that everyone has their own list, unless they’re designed with a helix flaw that either blocks giving a shit, or enhances not giving a shit. I find that I’ve sorted my regrets into two stacks. Stack one is comprised of things I should have done but didn’t. Stack two is a pile of things I did but shouldn’t have.

I’m not sure which stack is worse. They both have their moments.

I suppose that regret in retrospect means that you’ve matured with age. You are now in possession of more information, and with this new knowledge would do things differently if the same opportunity from days passed resurfaced.

So, that’s reflective regret.

Not to be confused with instant regret or consequential regret, which are sometimes difficult to differentiate from one another. If you stick your finger into the spokes of a turning bicycle wheel you will regret the decision instantly. This regret is a consequence of the pain that comes with mangled fingers. However, the real consequential regret occurs in the weeks or months it takes to recover, assuming you ever recover fully. If you don’t heal, and end up with two fingers that point odd directions, then consequential regret turns into perpetual regret. You get to rue a moment in time for the rest of your time.

I suppose that as soon as you identify a regret that it becomes perpetual. It might not be the same as crooked fingers, where it’s right in your face every time you try and tie your shoes or type at a keyboard. But it’s there, lurking and waiting to resurface on one of those days of regret.

I wonder sometimes about consequential regret. I wonder about all of the things that we get away with. I wonder if most people provide their own consequence for an action if they did something disturbing and no one knew? How many people are there walking around with a regret so profound that it shapes them?

I’m pleased that I can’t read minds. Imagine just how mind numbing it would be to sit in a crowded venue and be assailed by the unedited regrets of thousands of people at once. Not the Catholic confession version which I suspect is only part of the story.

Unedited.

The experience wound be horrid. But at least you’d be provided some assurance that you’re not alone. That there’s a host of people out there with much worse regrets than you possess. Of course the downside to a mind reading revelation of the sins of our fellow humans would be a stark recognition. An arrant realization that the world is a better place if some of those stories aren’t shared. And I guess there’s an outside chance it would occur to the mind reader that the world is a pretty dark place.

So I guess it’s not the worst thing for us to bottle up those errors and omissions in our life. It’s the price a person pays for living, and it’s our duty to carry our regrets with us and still function somewhere near normally.

And maybe learn as we go and stop adding to the pile.