Regret

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When I think of regret, I think of a few things:

• I do not have any

• I feel it so deeply

• Regrets Tattoo

Let's break this down.

Regret

Verb

Feel sad, repentant, or disappointed by something

This is the first time in my life I feel regret. Over treating another human so poorly who loves me so dearly. I ask myself would I have felt this regret if they weren’t so pressed and consumed by mistreatment to shut me out? A short and “simple” answer that helps me sleep at night and comes to terms with how I am capable of causing said harm is: no, I would not feel this regret. And because of that truth, along with feeling regret, I just feel like a crappy person overall.

Yet, there is hope and there is the confidence that I am simply human and that no matter what I am always willing to be a better person and in the short challenges that will have me prove that, no matter how long or when I accomplish that will

That's not what this blog post is about though. It's not about the end and everything will be fine no matter what. This is about the feeling of regret I feel as I write this during the “through” ( I like calling this phase the “through” rather than the journey because the journey sounds pretty and “through” better captures what I’m feeling. Picture this like the scene in Pixar's movie Soul where the lost souls just roam.

Illustration taken from Reddit depicting lost soul from Pixar's Movie "Soul"

This feeling of regret is a strong force. It’s a feeling pressing in my throat. Waiting to get out. To be gagged, purged, and sobbed out.

This is where my religion comes in. When all you can do is wait for a feeling to pass, clean up your act, and pray. Pray most importantly because even when I go to the gym, do my homework, clean my room, journal, and hang out with friends, regret seeps its way onto the stage so what could you do but pray or call out for some hope and the uplifting of sorrow?

I am looking for reassurance in another being. I am looking for forgiveness at the hands of another. This regret is partly alive because of the authority I lack over myself and what I can control. And the only way for this regret to pass is to go through the through the best way possible which is with the acknowledgment that I have the means to cause chaos to others, that I have already done so, and that I most likely will again (hopefully not soon and not intentionally unless this regret I feel right now was just a waste and I had learned nothing from this).

In this Introduction to Philosophy class, we talked about Stoicism. It’s a school in philosophy where followers or stoics practice to have an “indifference to pleasure or pain”. With this, a stoic may find their life free of any expectations which means free of any disappointment and free of regret. Following that indifference will have the outcome effect of a person having greater order and control in their life.

When researching regret and philosophy, stoicism came up as a whole, and with that this website named dailystoic. There is a quote from an article I read from the site about the philosophy of stoicism and some of its teachers.

“We should learn from the past and our failures, but to regret, to ponder and to revisit our previous attempts and then look at the present with disdain is a crime to your character."

So although I feel sad and very disappointed in my actions, whenever that feeling of regret finds its way to the surface, I have to make a conscious effort to identify what I want my character to be and what choices I need to make to live in accordance with that.