Regret

One of the most popular sentiments I read and hear is "I have no regrets". I don't understand it. Is it true that those who say they have no regrets do not feel sorrow or remorse or disappointment for deeds in the past?

If not feeling regret is as popular and as common as I perceive it to be, I am really different.

I feel a lot of regret.

I think it's a good thing.

I have treated people badly in my life. I've said thoughtless things that I never should have. I've been selfish, callous, impertinent. I've made poor decisions. I've not acted on things I should have done something about. I've cast bad votes. I've been destructive. I regret these things.

Some nights before I go to sleep, the ghosts of my regret visit me. I see the former lover I carelessly tossed aside, walked out on. I hear the mean things I said to my mother. Drunken nights involving property damage revisit me. The broken window, the damaged furniture, the shattered wine bottles hover over me. I feel sorrow and disappointment.

These ghosts keep memories alive. It hurts. I've cut corners ethically. That hurts. I left things I promised I'd finished, unfinished. Sometimes the ghosts of those unfinished projects visit my dreams and demand to be completed. I can't complete them. It's been too long. All I have is the regret and the insistent ghosts haunting me.

The ghosts don't visit me every night. They come often enough, spectral reminders of moments, days, girlfriends, family members, things I've neglected, decisions, and other people and events breaking out of the prisons I've locked them in, coming back, reminding me they won't go away and want to even score.

I read and hear people say that they have no regrets and I wonder, first of all, why they would not want their regrets. Regrets are seasoned and persuasive teachers. Without my regrets, I could imagine myself continuing to repeat doing those things I regret having done. While some of those ghosts want me to take care of unfinished business, others come back to instruct me. They take the form of those whose hearts I broke, needlessly, heedlessly; they take the form of friends or family members I was callous with; they take the form of those I've disappointed. I relive the pain I saw on their faces at the time. I see those faces again.

I wonder, second of all, how they keep the ghosts from visiting them. I don't do anything to invite these ghosts' visits. I might have had a perfectly wonderful day, lie down content with how my life is going, turn a jazz station on the radio, listen to Snug snore in bed next to me, and suddenly, without warning, a ghost visits. It's not a matter of will. It's not like I can keep them away.

Regret is a dark feeling, a painful one. Regret, like other forms of suffering, deepens compassion. My regrets and sorrows deepen my understanding of the pain others feel. Put another way, my life is enriched by my regrets. Regret feels honest to me. It's a feeling that pushes me to regularly inspect my present life in light of what has been dark in my past. It's a reckoning.

Ghosts hover as I write this. I knew they would. I almost didn't write this to keep those ghosts away. For the last ten or fifteen minutes I've been writing my father has been here with me; so have two women from the past; my dissertation advisor paid a visit; so did the foolishness I took part in on the streets of Kellogg at a good friend's bachelor party; needless harshness with students returned.

Now the ghosts are going away.

I think I'll read a book.

I'll give the ghosts a rest.

They'll be back.