Regret is the Unnecessary Weight We Add to Our Lives

What is it that you regret the most in life?

(Take a pause and think about it)

If you are scanning through the various instances of your life right now, I don’t want that need to arise henceforth. I feel,

Regret is a weighted average of your life, where you willingly place the heavier weights in the past

Yes, you read it correctly, willingly! We willingly live in the imaginary past letting it overpower every forthcoming happiness in our life. Let me break the concept down for you. As I look at it, there are two types of regrets:-

1. Temporary Regret

I feel all of us face this on a daily basis and I would like to call it more of a temporary disappointment. In this case, we use the word regret more freely and undermine its value. You regret making that silly mistake in the paper which costs you an entire grade in the subject. You regret having a terrible and unnecessary argument with your best friend. You regret not booking profits on a trade which goes into losses (my daily case) and just so many more. These generally last on your mind for a few days if not more and they are just a part and parcel of your daily life.

2. Deep-rooted Regret

Now, this is the regret I am talking about. I wouldn’t be wrong to compare it to a dementor. Many of us are stuck in this phase without knowing the way out. Sometimes it goes on for a lifetime too. Much similar to the butterfly effect, deep-rooted regret could arise from the tiniest of the things too. It’s all about what thoughts your mind gives power to. If you feel repeatedly pinched or guilty by the very thought of an incident, it could most probably be this, and it is this very regret that I want to question in my blog.

While I feel that temporary regrets are necessary as they add flavor to life; and you can’t enjoy the highs without the lows, I strongly believe the deep-rooted ones are totally unnecessary and self implicating. We all have made awful mistakes in life, some trivial, some grave ones. But that doesn’t deny you the right to live gleefully in the present. People start living in the world of ‘What ifs’ while experiencing deep regret.

What if I had done that thing, that particular thing, differently, maybe life would have been different today. What if I could go back to the past and change it.

And while immersing themselves in this, they miss out on an opportunity of fixing their life in the present. Sometimes every disappointment in life reminds them of how terrible a person they were once upon a time; to the extent, they start loathing themselves. But I am asking you why?

Why is it so difficult to give yourself a second chance? Why just a second chance? Give yourself a third chance, a fourth chance, as many chances as you wish to. I feel if you don’t have the magnanimity to forgive your own self and your past, let’s just keep the act of forgiving other’s mistakes aside. By saying, “I am such a terrible person/ feel guilty/ stupid and naive to have done such things.”, you are surrendering to the fact that you as a person haven’t and cannot grow and progress. Let’s think of it logically and ask ourselves a few questions.

— Was I in total control of the situation that took place? (If no, then it makes no sense putting yourself through so much pain. If yes, then go on to the next one)

— Am I willing to learn from my mistakes? (Your answer oughtta be a Yes to this one)

— Am I the same person as I was that day? (This is how you define your jurisdiction. I feel every day is a new experience of life and with every new experience, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and mentality changes)

Every time I face such a situation, I follow this routine. It helps me decrease the burden over myself and be more practical.

I know I might sound preachy, but for the sake of it,

In life, you either win or you learn

Every time you fall down, you have learned one new way to avoid it in the future; and if that’s the case then how can you ever regret learning new things? Unless……. you aren’t learning. So let’s shift our focus and bring things into perspective. It would be better if we pondered over, ‘What did I learn from this’ than ‘What if I had done this differently’. If you are someone stuck in this mess for a long time, it is never too late to start. Give yourself a breather and don’t be so hard on yourself. Look at the bigger picture and focus on the better things in life. With time, I am sure you will reach a stage where you will have the conscience to accept what happened and move on as a different person. Your past doesn’t define you certainly, and once you have forgiven yourself, trust me, it will be a lot easier to give other people in your life second chances. It’ll help you discard prejudices against people because, you for one know, what it is to turn on to a new leaf.

Our very beloved actor, Irrfan Khan left us with a beautiful line

सिर्फ इंसान गलत नहीं होता, वक्त भी गलत हो सकता है

“It’s not only people that are wrong, but times can also be wrong too”

So, let’s drop this word ‘Regret’ from our dictionaries and be more compassionate towards each other. After all, we humans, are always a work in progress. There is no finished product to us. We are refining ourselves with every new situation we face :D

As a blogger, it is difficult to keep coming up with new topics that would keep the readers engaged, and more so for a non-reader like me. I have run away from reading novels from a very young age and have always enjoyed the company of the outdoors more. This is one of the reasons you find my blogs to be simplistic in nature with no heavy vocabulary bombs being dropped here and there. However, this Quarantine I started blogging and promised myself to keep up the, ‘A blog a week’ tradition for as long as possible. This has led to a lot of self-introspection and thought and I trust it is helping me grow in the process. In the longer run, I definitely wish to improve my blog’s quality and in doing so, I hope to get committed to reading as much as I am to blogging.

While I do talk about the fragile topics in society, they are totally debatable and discretionary. In either case, I am open to all sorts of opinions and reviews from my readers. Until next time, Cheers!

~Adit D