This pain in my stomach
Won’t go away
I assume this is punishment
For all mistakes I’ve made.
Limp Bizkit – A Lesson Learned
Regret is such a powerful and somehow useless feeling. The number of times it brings you down pointlessly clearly outweighs any chances of self-improvement it might offer. So why have it?
Everyone seems to think that a life without regret is something extremely desirable. If you want to know what I think, [and you might, since you're reading] such a life simply involves giving little or no thought to your actions and their consequences. And, of course, depending on the person, or the period of their life, or who knows what else, it’s more or less easy to live without feeling something like this.
What’s interesting, though, is how we all pretend never to regret anything. We, the people, absolutely adore to talk about how nice and non-regrettable our lives are. Anyone you talk to about this will say that they try (and invariably succeed) to accept the past and either live the moment or look forward to what’s coming. And it’s a great concept, because, like I said, regret is pretty far from constructive in these future-oriented times.
Wouldn’t we all just be better off like those little brainwashed robot-people with their stupid placid voices and idiotic facial expressions that blab on about being positive, setting long-term goals and crapping pink hearts? Of course we would! Come on, thinking is overrated; you never know when you might end up contemplating the pavement, following a ten-storey fall.
So don’t think, be positive, turn everything into an achievable and desirable goal, keep that brainless grin looking like it was (badly) carved in wood and, well… I don’t really know, this kind of crap doesn’t work on me.
Seriously, I’ve tried the whole goal and self-reward and whatever thing, but by the end of the week I’m back to doing nothing, period. Hell, I guess I’m just too smart for all that. In fact, I’m so smart that I’m completely missing my point; let’s get back to that, shall we?
I was saying that there’s no regret for the modern man. Granted, I’m not a man, but I also indulge in thinking that I’ve no reason to feel sorry for anything in my past. I do have a great and fluffy life, I’ve always had it, and there are people who have nothing, whilst I have most things that I could wish for and so on and so forth. But that’s not how regret works, is it?
Seeing as how I’m so brainy, my regret-function is also quite intelligent, playing on things that I believe I lack. Former friends, better chances in life, second chances at not wasting time at some points, they all come in and bother me now and then, when I start to feel down.
Then, I think about “What if…?” and I imagine things, sometimes I might even obsess about them, and everything becomes so goddamn massochistic and stupid that I end up finding solace in the pretence that I need regret nothing.
After all, if anything in my life needs fixing, only in the future might I manage to set it right, don’t you think?
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
