Regrets : Stop being a cunt.
Have you yet learned regret is just not worth your energy? No - read on.
If yes, then go back to search for another more useful blog :)
I have pointedly few regrets - and decidedly so. Not because I am some whizz and letting things go - not at all. I am an elephant that never forgets.
I just have consciously decided that less regret helps me be more of who I am today - and not shaped by what cant be changed and is done.
My two main regrets are: (you didnt ask but this is a blog...soo)
- That I didn't ask my Dad to dance with me at my wedding
- That I didn't understand how to maintain friendships at the end of sections of my life - like end of school or Uni or moving jobs - just losing souls I quite liked and never saying goodbye or feeling it ended how I wished.
And they are the twol that come to me.
Now don't get me wrong, I wish somethings had been different, yes. Somethings may still come to me and I think what I could have done differently and what difference if any that may have made. Somethings I have said done encountered and reacted too - I do still review and think about. Like most normal conscious humans.....
But regret? No.
Inquisitive to ponder on different outcomes if different scenarios could have played out? Yes.
Sad - repentant or disappointed. No. No more...
Do not - at mid life - expend energy on regret.....
It is exhausting and debilitating and pointless. Let me tell you more....
- feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that one has done or failed to do):
Accepting the futile nature of regret is so releasing. Holding regret is so sorrowful it can burn you to the core, occupy and sadden your now - affect all that is now. Regret is so heavy - it weighs on you. And if it doesn't - it isn't regret.
I knew a lady who would tell anyone who would listen when she got drunk how much she regretted being with her partner. Futile conversations and concerns about her taking action to not continue her life, if filled with regret of her choice - fell on deaf ears. It became the office joke. When XX gets drunk she will no doubt cry and tell you her regret.
She never acted. She didn't know how. She refused to try suggestions and options and her regret became who she was - all she was - and she didn't seem to live much beyond it.
She is still with him now I believe (20 years on).
I spent my life regretting choices I had made, people I had given too much too, people I hadn't treated well, times I should have been better.
Regretting all I had been once, all things I had said in one moment, being held to times places things actions I could no longer change filled me with doubt on how i could move on, change - constantly repenting. My MO is to apologise constantly - if I drop a tennis ball, if I shout too loud, if i cry, if i dont do well. Sorry sorry sorry. Regret regret regret. It was entirely exhausting and debilitating.
Acknowledging I was a bully to a girl who contacted me in my thirties was hard, horrid and a bit odd. Do I feel horrified I did it? Yes. Sorry I made her sad then, Of course. DO I regret it? No.
Maybe that is shocking for some. For me, if I regretted it - I would still be holding on to what i can no longer change. And in fact - acknowledging i was a bully helped shape me to ensure I explicitly didn't want to make people feel that way ever again. Regretting it would mean if I could, I would change it - and whilst for her sake I wish it had never happened, for who I am now - I am glad I have held and felt both sides of the sword.
For being a bully - I then lost it all, and was bullied. I know how she felt because she did it back, for longer, with more, and harder. Do I regret that? No. Becuase it made me who I am today - and I am okay with who I am today
Wishing you could change what was - it futile. Wishing you could repent what you have already done and cannot take back is pointless. Making changes to ensure you learn, is the point. Regret isn't the final destination, It is a sum of an Action + Regret = Change.
I have many feelings of wanting things different. or wonder what outcome a different decision would have made. Moving to Luton meant my husband, an introvert - lost connection with many of his friends, who he had locally and historically - and due to him not seeking others or knowing how to make them at 40, does to this day make me wonder if he would have been happier never moving here. Do i regret moving here? Not at all. With this ponder - we have still built a home, a family and a stability shared for us both equally - based on our children. Neither of us have foundations here - we are each others foundation. Do I wish he would make some friends for him, yes.
My husband's cousin died a year or so ago - by choice. So sorrowfully sad and hard for all to understand. People would say 'Such a shame, such a loss' or 'How horridly horrid'.
I didn't feel shame. I didn't feel it was a shame for him or his family - but was what he wanted it to be. For those who missed him, I felt sorrow. Regretting he did what he did isn't mine to hold. Acknowledging that In the past I said things I wish I hadn't too him was hard. Do I regret saying those things? Placing and inserting myself in his mental turmoil to think it could of made any difference is beyond me. Accepting his soul had run its course in this place on this planet is hard, but acceptable. And seeing others who walked in his shadows of gloom relearn to feel sunshine without guilt is acknowledging it was all what it was going to be. Regret doesn't fit - missing him yes, regret he has gone. Not at all.
I have ponders of how I spoke to my mother as a teenager - the disgusting disregard, the appalling selfish tone and mannerisms today still make me feel awkward and ashamed. Do I regret being that way. No - I am sorry I was that way for her, of course- but for me, and how our relationship damaged and mended is why we are the way we are today. Regretting it would make me apologetic for too long. It made us now.
Do I wish I had said more meaningful things to my father on his deathbed. Yes. Do I regret not doing so - no. Because i was there and I could of but just didn't - and I can't change that now and to consume over what I should have could have would have - makes nothing good change for now, here, in me or anyone else. Regretting words that I can say now to him anyway and wouldn't have stopped him dying I don't feel. Missing his bear hugs and wishing he could have seen my boys for just one more decade, absolutely. Hearing one more of his well told charismatic amusing stories - daily. Wishing I could still smell him, feel his big hands and tell him he was more than he could have ever known, of course. Regretting those last months years and days, Never. It was what it was. It was how it was. It made who I am right now today and without it - i would not be this me I am.
Regret is a word to mean you would change it - you feel sorry you did it - you wish you hadn't. Re-understand what you feel - regret shouldn't tie you to something you cannot control or change - it has been, and you are here now because of it.
If you are being a cunt - do you regret it? Do you consume yourself with why and shame and guilt, Probably if you're half insightful, or decent human being.
But then the best thing when regret takes a hold of you - is action and change, Stop being a cunt.
If you regret how you let emotions control you - acknowledge it - apologise and learn to stop doing it.
How do you learn - by changing the last formula you used that led you to regret. If you shouted at a child and they cowered, acknowledge it - apologise and next time you feel like shouting - actively turn away, actively do something else - actively learn.
If you lose control and affect another soul deeply - own it, apologise - move on. Learn to not do it the way you did it.
Learn that regret binds you to things you do not have the control to change but should not be used as a pillar from which you are now as a person- use regret as a lesson for what you'd like to do differently the next time a similar scenario unfolds.
When my son gets married I wont enforce he dances with me, but i will dance - and think of my dad - and remember my regret, But it wont consume me. I will watch his wife dance with her father with joy - and release my regret to just a memory of a part of something that never happened. I just wont let it enfold me. Its done. It feels sad. But it doesn't change how much I know he loved me and i loved him. The regret of this one thing that never even happened cant override or over shadow all the other fabulous memories I do have.
When I think of friendships lost i wont pine or seek them now 20 years on and attempt to rekindle decades of loss. Just when new friendships come in, I know now how important that final goodbye is. That physical change of being in the same place, doesn't mean end. That not being an every day friend isn't the only type of friend there is. And that people who serve a time in your life sometimes can be let go and wouldn't fit now and that's okay too.
Regret nothing - just acknowledge, learn and if you can, do differently and if you can't - realise that one regret wasn't the entirety of all that that thing was.
Bullying that girl, truly, if what i said and did as a lost 8 to 15 year old had made who she is at 30, then that isn't all mine to hold. Acknowledging my behaviour of course affected and destroyed who she was and tore her - absolutely a duty to do. But to accept her notion that at 30 she finally found the courage to tell me I had destroyed her life - was too much.
To believe for her, nothing in her life after my few months of calling names as a baby child, had moved her on, had impacted her as much - that seeing how I was is a shape of who I was then (lost, scared and using assertiveness as a way to feel better about myself), and for her to not reach a point of sorrow and pity for me and how messed up I must have been to have been that way, is to me - on her. I acknowledge my horrible self then. I apologised. I informed her I agreed I was a shit and couldn't say enough how mortified I was I upset her so much. But will I hold that time in my life with regret - no. I cannot still be held accountable for actively changing my being, 30 years on.
I appreciate that last one may jar some people. But I don't hold her after-effects, the bullying harassment and solitude I felt post being a bully as all that defined me. I don't regret the angst and sorrow and lonliness I went through or feel it is all I ever felt. But part of who and what made me what I am.
And I have never ever treated anyone that way since.
Learn. Acknowledge. Move on. Actively change.
Or so I think :)
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