| Diary of a Neurotic | ||||||
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January 06, 2004 Due to my very busy schedule and final exams I can feel that my blog is feeling very neglected (yeah right! Who are you kidding! Just admit you don’t have anything to say! Confess that you’re suffering from a mental block!) So…I’m just posting a paper I did two years back on Regret. I also want to welcome some people who stumbled on my blog because of the following searches: 1. Chest of Rani Mukherji 2. Men caught cheating and forced to swap bodies stories What is up with you people? And WHO are you anyway? “Make it a rule of life never to regret and never look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it, it’s good only for wallowing in” Mansfield Katherine (1888-1923) It is said that one of the biggest reasons of people withdrawing from participation in life is regret. A well brought up child becoming wary and reserved. A successful career woman fighting a failed marriage. A retired old man looking back at his life with regrets. There is a reason for these all-too-common scenarios. They don’t “just happen” nor are they subject to fate there is an underlying reason for withdrawal from others and loss of integrity. It is true that life is not a dress rehearsal. However, it would be nice if we could do it over again and do it right. It would be great if we could only go back and fix it. Things would be completely different. But what is regret? Can you save them in a book like postage stamps to be reviewed one by one at your leisure? Some history parade of rights and wrongs, celebrating the one while decrying the other? To regret is to choose to feel badly about a past event, a decision made in haste, an opportunity not pursued, words spoken or not spoken, the course and outcome of a relationship. For some, regret comes when it seems like if a different path could have been taken, we could have spared ourselves, or someone else, unnecessary pain. It often comes with feelings of sadness, loss, or guilt about a wrong. We are obsessed with individuality, and tied to it is an obsession with strength and weakness. We are supposed to define so many things as weak. Straight edge kids define drinking as weak; vegetarians define meat eating as weak, anyone who ever gets lonely or depressed is thought of as weak. Suicide is seen as a sign of weakness. It is almost as if people have this high-school football coach mentality that if you define something as "weak" it will shame people into not doing it. Call someone "weak" for attempting suicide will surely make them fight back and prove they aren't weak. Well, it’s right in some fantasy world, but not in reality. In reality, we are all weak. In reality, we all get lonely. I don't understand people who talk about never having regrets. Somehow, people seem to think that having regrets about anything you ever did is a sign of weakness, of not completely believing in yourself. If you want to have no regrets at the end of your life that means you have to live each day of your life with no regrets. The answer is proactive living. A lifestyle that involves doing what you want to do, going where you want to go, being who you want to be. You know you are living and working without regrets when you are fully engaged, alert, alive, and enthusiastic in your life. When you are proactive in your life problems are seen as possibilities, obstacles are seen as opportunities to learn and occasions to do things differently. What could be possible for you in you were living a proactive life? Would you go back to school and study ballroom dancing or Buddhism, travel through Europe on a bike, risk that new romance, start a new business? (1:58 AM) ~`~
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