Love and Regret
4/24/08
This article is about love and regret. We are born alone and naked, and scared. As we get older, we develop connections with people which we value so highly. Then, at the end, we die alone.
When I think about the connections I’ve had with people over the years, I realize that those connections are the meaning of life. It’s incredibly important to have a life of connections, positive connections, with others. In fact, one might define one’s life around how many people have been touched, cared about, or simply positively affected, by your presence.
In a way, I’ve had a blessed life, because even at the ripe age of 38 I’ve finally learned this lesson. For example, the time I spend with my daughter is the closest I’ll ever get to heaven. We have so much fun together. I worry about her constantly, and the thought of her not being in my daily life haunts me more than the thought of my own death. Strangely, I rarely think about my own death in any other context but whether I’ll see her again. It is a wonderful feeling to transcend life. I’m nearly there. In Buddhism, liberation and enlightenment occur when one goes beyond the “real world” and instead sees the true essence of life. I believe that there are many paths to enlightenment, and no religion has a monopoly on it.
At nearly 14, she is growing up so fast, and I often wonder how things will turn out for her. She has had two wonderful and caring parents all her life, and a large extended family, and many friends as well.
I hope I can see her as much as I can in the future.
Regret is a "mature" and complex emotion. Regret requires at least somewhat sustained reflection over time to ossify into a palpable feeling. Most interesting to me is that regret is nearly always born of thought, of intellectual rumination, rather than the more visceral emotions like happiness, or even heartbreak. However, the more emotional version of regret is guilt.
Regret is deeply internal. Most people hide their regrets like their good wines, and fear the day that sink into sharing them. Mostly, this is because the more externally-derived form, shame, is impossible to contain. Public information takes on a life of its own.
Regret is also a “high class” emotion. One needs to have a certain level of intellectual wherewithal to review past decisions and actions. Only upon doing so would one consider the permutations and combinations of events that could have created a better future. Of course, there’s no guarantees, and hindsight is 20/20, so often people wish they could change their past without really knowing if that change would have been better at all.
Regret also requires time, which conjures a connection with wisdom. As I age, I find that life’s ups and downs teach lessons far more powerfully, and painfully, than any textbook.
Interestingly, people uniformly acknowledge regret for both actions taken as well as actions not taken. Life’s errors of commission seem to have an inherent reward based solely on the action and will, while the errors of omission (regretting that which you did not do) have the added pain of inaction, of paralysis, of the odor of death.
There’s an old proverb, “A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams”. I agree with it, and proudly consider myself old based on it. With no regrets.