Regrets That You Regret Regretting

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

― Fernando Pessoa

When I turned 30 last 2001, I wrote a piece entitled, “Writing 30”, which summarized my regrets in all my 30 years - things I was not able to do, my could have beens, should have beens and if onlys.

After a while, except for one, I realized that there are regrets that you regret regretting. Later on, I decided that I can live with those things undone. I can forgive myself for those lapses. And then after a while, I found out I have additional ones - things I wish I have done when I was younger, when time was on my side. And now, there's little time, and there are no more chances left.

Then there are deeds or feelings or experiences in your past that you regret doing or feeling or going through. There are things that you just wish didn't happen at all. It may be due to naivety, fake ignorance or worse, plain stupidity. You knew that they were wrong and wouldn't do any good to you, and yet, you were stubborn. You knew the consequences, and yet you pushed through with it. When you were younger, you didn't know, so perhaps there’s an excuse. But when you’re older, like I am now (well, that has been 13 years ago), and you look back, you say, “Hell! What was I doing that time?” And even if you want to hit your head on the wall, you can’t make them disappear. You can’t even turn back the time, undo things and start all over like they never happened.

These experiences SHOULD make a better person out of you, right? You should have learned from those mistakes, turned pains into power, and wounds into wisdom. They say that you have an excuse if the mistake/s happened the first time. After all, life didn't come with instructions. But if it happens more than once, you’re already a fool. What happens when you never learn? What becomes of you when you do commit the same mistake/s again?

Are you guilty of this? Do you sometimes wish you could go back to that time when you were at the crossroads, making a crucial decision, and that instead of taking the wrong road, you took the right one? You knew better because you have been there, done that. And yet you took a risk, and opted for the unpopular choice. You would think that those past mistakes, lessons, experiences of yours have made you a more critical person. And you thought you had been wiser than before. But now, you don’t know anymore.

American writer Libba Bray said, “We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds.”

And as they say, “Don’t regret what you've done. At some point, it’s what you wanted.” There are wrong regrets, as much as there are right regrets. And we always hope we end up with the right ones.

~TheGoodGirl