Everybody tells me to live life without regrets; that you need to take chances and risks and make mistakes and a bunch of Hallmark junk about carpe diem and life's too short.
I honestly don't believe that you can live life without regrets, because you never know which choices you will regret making, or which mistakes will turn into the best memories. You never know what you will regret until it's over and done with, and trying to prevent the inevitable is simply a waste of time.
For example, say that you're given the opportunity to go sky-diving (a favorite on the bucket lists, I'm sure). And you say to yourself, Well, golly, I don't want to not go and then spend my whole life regretting the fact I missed out. So you go. And your parachute fails, and you crash into a barn and spend the rest of your life breathing through a straw in order to maneuver your power chair.
Now tell me, would you regret that decision?
It's impossible to tell which decisions we will be happy with, and which will lie heavy on our conscience. The average human makes 612 decisions a day; you can't spend all of those 612 decisions wisely, because you are human and therefore, imperfect.
Life is not all sparkles, sunshine and unicorns. You let down your friends, yell at your parents, fail a test. It happens to the best of us. You regret these things, of course you do. Nobody likes failing, making mistakes, lashing out.
But it happens. Regret happens.
I don't understand why people shun regret. I feel sorry for it; it's the one human emotion we don't try to justify or accept. It is the bastard of the feeling family, through no fault of it's own. Regret is natural; it is also a teacher.
"Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."
It's impossible to tell which decisions we will be happy with, and which will lie heavy on our conscience. The average human makes 612 decisions a day; you can't spend all of those 612 decisions wisely, because you are human and therefore, imperfect.
Life is not all sparkles, sunshine and unicorns. You let down your friends, yell at your parents, fail a test. It happens to the best of us. You regret these things, of course you do. Nobody likes failing, making mistakes, lashing out.
But it happens. Regret happens.
I don't understand why people shun regret. I feel sorry for it; it's the one human emotion we don't try to justify or accept. It is the bastard of the feeling family, through no fault of it's own. Regret is natural; it is also a teacher.
"Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."
If you never made mistakes, if you have never regretted a decision, than you will never be wise. And I am by no means saying I am wise--at sixteen, I haven't lived much yet--but one day, I intend to be wise, and I will never get there if I continue to banish regret like everybody else.
