LIFE'S REGRETS

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,Moves on;

nor all your Piety nor Wit,

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

These lines from the "Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur exquisitely exemplifies the futility of regret.

One of the commonest advice we give, and receive, is to “Live your life so that at the end of it you'll have no regrets" implying that we can in fact avoid regretting what we did or should have done. Because of this we often find ourselves reluctant to do or say something because of our fear that it may cause us to regret later.

To me, allowing our lives to be guided by the fear of regretting later is unfortunate. To be controlled by a negative emotion, having to worry about what should have been rather than what could be, is not only unsatisfactory, but robs us of so many opportunities to achieve fulfillment. It cheats us from any chance of expressing our true selves.

Like all learned behaviors, Regretting is not a natural, inborn instinct, but rather an artificial response which we acquire along the way. Unlike the animals, we humans are victims of our experiences and tend to store them in memory pools and use them to create an image of ourselves, our being, our personality and our behavior. Our responses are less likely to be
natural and instinctual, but rather controlled and deliberate. Our actions are not determined by the demands of self preservation and survival, but by the need to accommodate and to please our inner egos. The lion does not regret killing the innocent lamb no more than the eagle when it swoops down to grab a fleeing rabbit. These are instinctual acts, predetermined by nature.

Man however, weighed down with the demands of conforming within a society’s codes, is required to submerge his basic instincts. The society’s survival is dependant on group conformity which naturally means that the individual’s behavior has to undergo modification.
This is understandable, for without this consensus society will fragment and our civilization will not exist.

I have no doubt that we can all relate to situations where an action done in good faith with the intention of avoiding conflict and pain backfires, leading to unexpected and unplanned consequences. To me this gives rise to significant regret which is difficult to erase and sometimes have to accept and live with.

Any action we do is likely to give rise to some regret, either by being inappropriate or inadequate. Provided however this is done in good faith, we can only accept the result and learn from it. In the end, while doing everything to avoid having to regret, we should never spend our lives avoiding saying or doing anything because of consequences or subsequent regrets.

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Accept life, and you must accept Regret.
……Henry F. Amiel

Regrets and recriminations only hurt the soul.
……Armand Hammer

It is better to look ahead and prepare;
Than to look back and Regret.
…..Jackie Joyner-Kersee

You seldom experience Regret for anything you’ve done;
It is what you haven’t done that will torment you.
……Wayne Dyer

Regret for the things we did, can be tempered by time;
It’s the Regret for the things we did not do; that is inconsolable.
…..Sidney J. Harris