There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss
from Rent, by Jonathan Larson
There are times I fall into that category. A girl named Audrey asked me out a couple of times in first year university: if she'd only managed to catch me a week or two earlier, I wouldn't have just embarked on another relationship (which ended poorly a few years later). And I would have said yes unreservedly: I'd had a crush on her for about a year. The night before I married Eva, sleep was (perhaps understandably) hard to come by, and so I spent a good chunk of that night wandering down various mental/carnal pathways. Audrey's was the only one that retained any slight hint of allure. Of course, by then, she was long married and settled herself.
But most of the time, I try not to regret anything. I try to learn from my poor decisions. I sure have made enough of them, after all. In every one, though, there is at least one lesson, even if it's a simple one like bet you won't do that again.
The other top regrets were interesting. Twenty three percent would like the chance to do a job interview over. I botched one myself last year, and only realized afterwards how poorly I'd performed. Probably a good thing, too: shortly afterwards I got a hefty raise...and the job I've got (unlike the one I interviewed for) is damn near recession-proof. No regrets there.
Nineteen percent regret hitting the send button on a nasty piece of email. I've sent my share of those, too: I specialize in formal, businesslike evisceration. One of those emails killed a friendship; another prolonged an already existing estrangement. That friendship is still dead, and deservedly so. The estrangement is, thankfully, over. I don't regret the letters I wrote so much as that I felt I had to write them. A little more maturity was called for in both cases and I was a lot less mature than I (think I) am now.
Doubtless I'll make other dumb choices in the future. So long as I learn from them, I don't see any reason to regret them.
2 comments:
If I could do anything over again, well, there would be too many to list. But regret is what it is - there is nothing you can do about it, except as you say Ken, learn from those mistakes and try not to do them again. Can't say I've been completely successful on that front as well, but, such is life :)
I regret a lot of things. I think people who say "I don't regret anything" are either fooling themselves or are letting their pride get in the way. I find nothing wrong with regret, it is part of being human and learning from mistakes.
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