I know what you’re thinking…. “Ewww, regret?!” Is that not what you’re thinking??? Oh well, I tried. Perhaps “Ugh, regret!?” might be slightly more accurate. I don’t know if people still talk like that. I can’t keep up with all this new slang kids are using these days. And by kids I mean anyone younger than me. There was absolutely nothing wrong with saying “Wow that outfit is on point today”, but apparently instead of “on point”, it is now “on fleek” or something. Now I know how old people feel. Anyway, I’m not writing just to complain about the newest trends in speaking. Don’t get me wrong, I could write PLENTY about it, but that will have to be for another time. Today I am writing about regret.
Everyone says you should live your life with no regrets, but I feel like it’s to late. Even if I regret nothing from this day forward it won’t even matter because I already regret so much. When I was in treatment my counselors always seemed concerned when I spoke about things I regretted, as if regret is something that I shouldn’t have. I don’t think that’s possible, and it certainly didn’t mean that I wasn’t getting better. I’m sure that some of the happiest people on earth have at least one thing that they regret. Oh yea and… “letting go” of regret…. oh please. Sure, I’ll get right on that (She said sarcastically).
I could be wrong. I’m not expert on the subject, but I feel like regret isn’t some weed you simply can pull out of the ground, and it certainly isn’t something you can just let go of. Now give me a minute to explain myself here. I’ll give you an example; School. I feel some hard core regret about how horrible I was at school, even though I came to realize that a good portion of it was my mental health. Regardless of the possible causes, the situation remains the same… I was an utterly hopeless student, and that is what fills me with regret.
The dictionary defines regret as a verb: ‘A sense of repentance, guilt, or sorrow, as over some wrong done or an unfulfilled ambition.’ In a sense, it can be viewed as a current emotion brought on by past events. The regret in this form is like an emotion, and just like all crappy emotions it will come and go when it wants. If there is one thing I know it’s that you can’t just let go of emotions. You can’t control them; you can only control how you let them affect you. So, assuming my logic isn’t totally wacko, that means that instead of letting go of the regret we must let go of the cause of said emotion. (Wow I almost sound smart today).
Regret is the effect of our less then intelligent moments or actions. Sometimes you might hang up on someone and feel bad so you apologize. Sometimes regret is nothing that an apology and perhaps a bit of bribery can’t fix. Other times, like in my case, the situation is unchangeable. No apology or bribe (unless the person I was bribing had a time machine) can change this portion of my past. It is in these situations that we have to let go of the past to get rid of the regret.
Now I can’t tell you how to let go of the past because obviously if I knew how to that I wouldn’t be sitting at my house trying not to stress eat ice cream and writing an entire post about regret. If I knew the key to putting the past behind me, you’d be reading something totally lame and pointless, like a post about the top 10 most attractive kpop idols or something because I’m shallow like that (Totally kidding, I promise you will never have to read anything that on my blog, please unfollow me if I ever get so deperate that I start writing posts like that, but honestly even then then I could probably only get as far as a top 5 cause I’m really bad at ranking things). Wow; that was a lot of side noting… where was I??? Ah that’s right….. Putting the past behind us; I do know that the key to accepting your past is remembering that it is just that…. the past, and you can’t fix it, you don’t get any do-overs, all you can do is learn from it. If you’re anything like me you’re probably thinking, “Oh my gosh tell me something I don’t know!” Like I said before… I can’t. The best I can do is look up some quotes to help us both out.
“Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.” ~Swami Sivananda
