Regrets

I don't know about everybody else but personally, I've always felt that regret is one of the worst emotions ever in this world.

I'm not talking about small regrets like feeling sleepy the whole day at work because you were up playing games the whole night. I'm talking about huge regrets that have altered your aspired way of life and left a dark blemish that you simply cannot turn a blind eye to.

Regrets that filled you with "what-ifs?" and "would life have been better?" that could make you turn cold inside when you realized you could have quite potentially ruined yourself.

Because the thing about regret is, it doesn't just melt away with time. The trace of regret still lingers, occasionally coming back to haunt you once you allow yourself to think about it. Even if good things do come out of it, you still can't help but think and obsess over it. It doesn't fade off the way footprints along the sea coast get washed away by the ebb and flow of the tide, thus erasing all evidence of existence there.

The horrible thing about regret is that it can really eat you and tear you up inside.

I have a friend who lost her dad when she was 12 years old. The worse thing? She had a huge fight with him the previous night he passed away.

She never got a chance to apologize, to redeem back some of the hurtful words exchanged. And she had to live with the pain of knowing that her father probably left the world saddened and hurt.

How do you live with that kind of guilt and regret for the rest of your life?

I have quite a number of deep regrets myself. Regrets that I let myself be so easily affected by what other people did to me, so much so that it affected my academics. Regrets that I refused to let others into my life and ended up hurting so many of my loved ones. Regrets that I have been so naive in thinking that people are a bunch of roses...and didn't see the thorns coming straight at me.

I remember reading somewhere that regret is really just anger at yourself and I realized how true that is. The base of my regrets are mostly anger of how stupid and naive and blinded I was. And all these regrets will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I would be lying if I say I don't wonder about how my life would have been different had I been stronger and more cautious. When I allow my mind to wander, I find myself imaging about life had I reacted and behaved differently. And in most scenarios, I wound up happier and enjoying life much more.

Later on I realized that this is just what I imagine life to be. Everybody dreams of being the popular kid, being loved by all or the smart straight-A student etc etc. When we look back on what went wrong, we align our dreams and aspirations to the alternate route in life, hence convincing ourselves that things would be better if we had done things differently. It's the unknown and wonderment that kept us fantasizing. For all we know, the other route could have yielded much more painful results.

As Oscar Wilde once said," One's real life is often the life that one does not lead".

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I believe in reincarnation and karma. I believe that all our enjoyments and sufferings in this life is a result of what we did in our previous existence, hence I believe Hitler is probably a cockroach right now, running away from the scores of feet raining down on him every day.

I'm pretty sure that nobody in this world can remember what their past life was. But if the pain of regret is anything to go by, I think people would start living their lives more carefully if they knew about their past life and what they did to deserve such sufferings/ happiness in their current life. They would probably think twice about harming people, torturing people if they know that all this is just going to come back to them and hit them twice as hard in their next life. And they would feel and suffer similarly for it, filled with bitter regret but knowing that this is what they deserved.

On the other hand, if they are leading happy, fulfiled lives, they would be more encouraged to be a better person so that their next life would be an even happier and smooth-sailing one and they can enjoy it.

But alas, this is not the way the world works

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That was quite a cheerless bit I have written in front so I shall end the theme of regrets in a better light. I have mentioned this before and I shall say it again - I do sincerely believe that everything happens for a reason, even if sometimes my world seems to crash before my eyes. And believe me, I have been through something of that magnitude. At the risk of sounding annoyingly optimistic, I will just say that I will learn from things and allow hard times to make me a stronger person. Because if I do not do that, I would have failed utterly and miserably in life.

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable"
- Sydney Smith