Monday, July 16, 2007

To regret or not regret

There are two clear philosophies here. Live life with regrets or not so much? I see a lot of "no regrets" comments on teenage myspace pages, and although I've seen similar comments on my own daughters' pages, I'm not using them as an example here. All walks of life and ages seem to favor a side on this issue.

For me, I'd feel a little arrogant to say I have no regrets. There are plenty of things I have done or words I have said from my teen years until now that I wish I hadn't, or at least wish I would have handled in a different/better manner. And although the main "no regrets" argument is that had you not done or said those things, the circumstances or consequences that followed wouldn't have happened, you therefore wouldn't have learned from them, and maybe life wouldn't have played out the way it did. I understand that argument, but saying I don't regret anything just seems callous. Let's say you can think of several instances where you probably hurt someone's feelings or damaged a relationship or lost someone's trust. I just can't look at situations like that and say, "nope, I sure don't regret treating people like that!"

That being said, there are some cases in which you are part of the cause of someone's grief but you still don't regret it. For instance, I don't regret getting a divorce.

But I do regret not staying in touch with friends, for not always having my priorities in life right, for not putting my girlfriends first in highschool, for not wanting to play more when the girls were little, and definitely for griping out that woman in the Albertson's parking lot. That's the one that'll come back and bite me when I least expect it someday. :-)

There's no right or wrong, just different views. I'm just curious how others feel.

2 comments:

DeeBee said...

I have regrets. Even if you say "well, I wouldn't know what I know today", if it wasn't handled properly, it's a regret....no matter what lesson you learned. If you handled it right in the first place then you are just that much further along in the game. Some people will have more and some will have less. If you don't have any regrets then you must be darn near perfect. Just my view.

mel... said...

Yea, what she said. I definitely have regrets, some bigger than others, and I'm pretty sure I'll have more in the future. In fact, probably have one in a few hours after eating the pizza that is in the oven.