I wish I’d been…

Awful truth #19: A life with no regrets is not a life.

“The past is always looking over your shoulder, whispering things you don’t want to hear.”

—Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can’t Win

“One day baby, we’ll be old
Oh baby, we’ll be old
And think of all the stories that we could have told”

—Reckoning Song

A person with at least some modicum of decency is capable of regret.  A true sociopath lacks this capacity.  I envy the sociopath’s unburdened conscience and untroubled sleep.

Regret is part of being a human being, one replete with human feelings and frailties, virtues and vices.  Something doesn’t become a regret until it’s too late to do anything about it.  A regret may be our own fault, the fault of others, or the result of Fate’s capricious hand.

Over time, the regrets pile up.  These can become an unbearable burden, crippling each day. A single catastrophic regret can also do this. Regrets can serve as a source of strength, having endured them.  Regardless of blame, they are a critical component of the wisdom which is earned by our life experiences and help us do better going forward…if we let them…and we often don’t.  That’s part of being a human being: both learning from the past and not learning from the past.    

Life is an amalgam of regrets.  Those steps on our life’s journey we took that we wish we hadn’t.  Those steps we failed to take that we wish we had.  These choices led us to where we are.      

I wish I’d been a better person at so many places and times.  In so many roles.  This is the source of many of my regrets.  I wish I’d been a better…

son,

brother,

stepbrother,

stepson,

godfather,

inspector,

friend,

roommate,

brother-in-law,

uncle,

nephew,

cousin,

grandson,

employee,

co-worker,

supervisor,

classmate,

schoolmate,

teammate,

team captain,

neighbor,

customer,

boyfriend,

pet owner,

stranger.

So many things to have been better at.  At the myriad junctures of the nexus that is a macrame of our intertwined lives.  These threads reach back to the beginning of time and stretch outwards to the end of it.  A kind word left unsaid, a kind act not taken, these could’ve made all the difference in the world…theirs and mine…ours. 

I wish I’d exercised courage when it would’ve made an eternal difference.  I wish I had not brought unnecessary sadness or cruelty into this world.  I wish I’d been better at all of the aforementioned roles and not passed up the countless opportunities to make the world a better place, or at the very least not a worse one. 

But then I tell myself, these regrets are part of the path, the journey, to places not yet known.  Perhaps changing too much, or perhaps a single thing, would throw Fate off, resulting in unforeseen consequences, perhaps worse than the original source of the regret.  Mine and the other person’s.  I have to tell myself this or I’d go mad, crushed by many of these regrets.  Just as I tell myself that at times perhaps harshness was the wise choice.   

Yes, I should’ve done better many times. Damn many.

We can’t go back in time and do a better job of it…or not do a better job of it.  We can’t atone…we can’t not atone.  All we can do is try and do better. The arrow of time points in one direction, and only one direction.  To go backwards is to impale oneself upon this sharpened bayonet point that is meant to herd us in that one direction.  Toward each tomorrow and each new opportunity for regret, depending on the choices we make as flawed human beings.