On The Subject Of Regret.

[greenstorm]

Khammie was talking about regret down there in the comments, saying that he doesn't feel it. I used to be in that camp, the young, fresh, new no-regrets camp. It was common to say to each other, "I needed to live through what I did to get here, so I don't regret any of it."

Well, yes, it was one way of getting here. I think there are likely better paths to travel to get to good places than the one I did, although I've not done so badly. Certainly, there are things that I wish had been different. Certainly, I will do things in my future that I wish I had done differently. To a certain extent, I think that's part of the learning process. Sure, it doesn't make much practical difference. You can't actually change stuff. But! To never wish it, how arrogant is that? Now hard is that on yourself, on the people you've hurt, the things you've missed, to wrap it all into a bundle marked expedience or necessity and throw it right away? No, my regret is real now.

I should watch the Last Unicorn again.

On a related note, Greatpoets continues to perform. This almost made me cry.

The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.

-Carl Dennis

Comments

[wik.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think anyone who has no regrets has a lack of imagination (sorry Kham ;) )

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, you're right about the poem. To be honest, I skip or skim many of the poems you post, but the first couple lines of this one grabbed me immediately.

I was nearly brought to tears, too, here sitting at my desk at work. Wow.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

I skip most of the poems on greatpoets. The ones I bring here are meaningful to me. I know people respond very differently to different wordsets.

But yes.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

"...a large-souled man like you... so she can save her empathy for the children..."

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

You know, I've never really thought of God as depressed, before. Joyful, sure. Loving, sure. Wrathful, angry, spiteful, even incompetent, sure. But somehow, the thought of the supreme being being saddended and depressed at the fates we choose for ourselves without his omniscience is heartbreaking itself.

[khamura.livejournal.com]

It's exactly the opposite! I can imagine all the things that could have, should have, would have, must have been. All these worlds coexist, if not as possible worlds, then as parts of my mind. Why should I feel regret over something that I did do differently somewhere else?

And in this world, if anything had been different, I would not be the person wishing things to be different, and would not have a reason to wish things to be different. It just makes no sense to me.

[whimsicalzephyr.livejournal.com]

I love the Last Unicorn. Maybe when Tillie comes over to watch Veggie Tales you could come over and bring it too. Or to Little Girl Day.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

When is she going to do that?

[estrellada.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, school eats my brain.

[wik.livejournal.com]

But how can you even fathom all these possible realities? To dismiss them as choices made by other people seems like a sham to me. These possibilities are a part of you, if only a vestigal part, like ghostly octopus arms, suckers clasped onto a different future.

It is simply by the fact of being finite that one regrets. If experience, if sensual data is a noble, worthy goal, then we have no choice but to regret. You simply cannot visit every place you want to visit in your lifetime. You cannot know all the people you wish you'd known. You cannot keep all the people you'd like to keep. But these alternative universes hold at least some of this potential. Some of that potential still lingers in the air.

Regret doesn't have to be as bleak as wishing that your past had evolved some way other than what it did, and crying over past choices. It can simply be melancholy, to look back and touch those octopus arms, and dream of where you might have gone. The sadness it produces can be wonderfully heady; you feel more than you are as those ghostly arms become flesh for an afternoon.

It's simply bravado to say that you only desire to be what you are. There is no perfect life; it isn't graded on a scale.

[whimsicalzephyr.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I should nudge her.

[whimsicalzephyr.livejournal.com]

Plan something for a weekend afternoon. I'll be around, just getting out of bed.

[whimsicalzephyr.livejournal.com]

How 'bout this Saturday or Sunday aftrenoon?

[khamura.livejournal.com]

No, they're choices I made, elsewhere. That I making that choice, however, is fundamentally different from me while at the same time being fundamentally me -- else there would be no point in me saying that it is indeed my decision in another framework. Context, as always, is a determining factor of the thing per se.

But I do agree with what you say about melancholy, and I do feel these things. Still, to go with the poem above, for all I know, it's the life I've chosen. Regret, to me, implies the wish to undo the decisions I made in the past, and to have chosen differently; but for me, to wish that is to wish that I was that other me -- it's the sort of redundancy that just doesn't compute for me when I presuppose not merely the possibility of having made different choices (for some could argue determinism), but also that these possible worlds are not only simply possible, but co-exist independent of the actual one that I find myself in.

I veer off into possible world theory here. :> To get back on topic and sum up: melancholy I do feel -- for me, that is simply the act of exploring, with my mind's eye, these different worlds. I do that quite often, actually, in the form of roleplay in one form or another. Regret, I do not feel -- that is to say, I don't experience the wish to be actualized in a different world.

But, as they say, that might just be me. ;>