The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
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Regret is driving force behind desire to change
Brian Cox
PUBLISHED: January 10, 2008
I catalog regrets. I keep a running list of personal regrets, family regrets, career regrets, childhood regrets, romantic regrets, financial regrets, and a burgeoning category of miscellaneous regrets. It's a long list of things I wish I had or hadn't done and had or hadn't said.
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I regret, for example, that in elementary school one year I joined in with friends to tease and ostracize a fourth-grade classmate. It was mean and cowardly and if I could go back, I would change that.
I regret succumbing to shyness once in high school and not waving at a girl who waved at me. I chose instead to pretend I didn't see her simple wave and turned away. I should have waved. I think now I may have lost a possible friend (or, who knows, maybe even a date!).
I regret once telling my wife her new haircut made her look like a boy. I regret that one a lot because I'm not sure she has yet forgiven me.
I could go on and on. They just keep coming. So I have grown accustomed to living with regret. Regret, I have concluded, is a cornerstone of life, a natural by-product of the stubborn, steady, one-way flow of time and the inherent backward-reaching character of memory. From the conflicting nature of time and memory emerges regret.
An uncle of mine once alleged proudly that he carried no regrets, and even though I was only 15 or 16 at the time I remember being flabbergasted.
No regrets? How was that possible? Even by my mid-teens I had compiled a pretty impressive regret catalogue and could not imagine a man in his late 20s or early 30s as living with no regrets.
"He's either a liar or a fool," I thought.
"If you could go back, you wouldn't change a thing you did?" I asked.
"Nope," he said. "Those things are what made me who I am today."
I pondered that a bit, and decided my uncle must hold a fairly high opinion of the man he was that day. He must have been pretty pleased with who he was.
If his personhood were a cake just out of the oven, I imagine him looking it over, taking a small taste and declaring, "Scrumptious! Wouldn't change a thing!"
I'm a different kind of baker, I guess. I tend to think maybe a little more cinnamon or a touch less nutmeg might be an improvement.
And that is how I have come to regard regret: as an opportunity to change my personal recipe.
I was recently reviewing my regrets for 2007, and contending for the top spot was my forgetting to attend a valued friend's wedding.
That's right. You have every reason to be horrified by the idea. It's not that he and his wife unexpectedly eloped; it's not that I didn't receive an invitation well ahead of time; it's not that the wedding was on some distant island to which I couldn't afford the airfare; it's not that I was suddenly stricken with smallpox and felt I wouldn't be welcomed.
No, I forgot. I was mowing the lawn on a Saturday afternoon when I abruptly pulled up short at a startling thought: "His wedding's today!"
I checked my watch. My faulty memory was running about two hours too late. I had missed the entire affair.
Even I could not comprehend the depth of my stupidity. How hard is it, I thought, to check a calendar every once in a while so that you have an idea of what's happening - oh, maybe tomorrow, for example? Weddings don't exactly sneak up on you.
How do you tell a friend, "Yeah, sorry I didn't make your wedding, but I forgot"?
You can't, that's how. You have to make something up. You have to say something like, "Wow, I'm so sorry, but I woke up in the morning and I ... had ... leprosy. Yeah, very bizarre. Don't worry, it's all gone now. Doctors said it was a rare 24-hour variety, but they really discouraged social gatherings for a while."
There was no way to make it better. There was no way to apology enough. Missing the wedding immediately became a deep and abiding regret that I shall carry the rest of my days.
But I am determined not to register another regret like it.
Last week, I purchased a pocket calendar that I intend to carry with me everywhere and refer to constantly. I am writing everything down and will not forget another important date.
I can change.
OK, it may not work, but I would regret not trying.
Staff Writer Brian Cox can be reached at 429-7380 or bcox@heritage.com.
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