Do you have regrets?
Who doesn't. Anyone who tells you they don't have regrets will some day regret saying that. Because we all, at one time or another, have done or said or maybe merely thought something that we wish we hadn't.
I regret not staying in touch with old, dear friends. But because of that regret, I've worked harder to reconnect with some of them. I also think I try harder to stay connected with people I care about, no matter how far apart we are geographically. Gotta love search engines and e-mail and Facebook.
I have mentioned other regrets in previous posts, ones about wishing I'd been diagnosed earlier and made better behavioral choices and gotten rid of my baby weight quickly and continued playing clarinet in college.
But they're all rather small regrets. Fairly insignificant. Piddling. I'm sure folks out there regret things like once getting the name of their now-ex tattooed on their ass or puking on the shoes of and/or passing out in front of some really cute person they were trying to impress at a college party or flipping off the person who cut them off in traffic only to discover it was their boss or their grandmother or a priest.
What we should really ask is whether the big-time sh**heads have regrets. Like Osama bin Laden. Do you think he ever feels bad for being responsible for killing thousands of people and terrorizing the globe? Or George W. Bush. Do you think he ever wishes he had studied more in school, snorted less coke, listened less to that Waterboarding Mafioso Cheney? Or Bernie Madoff. Would he like to apologize for bilking billions from people who trusted him with their life savings? I'm guessing his only regret is that he got caught.
I did something today that I may regret later on down the line. I'm not discussing it because I don't want it public knowledge. (If you are really curious, e-mail me and I'll give you details. Unless I can't.) But I did have someone describe me as "brave" and insist I'd done the right thing. I'm hopeful. Even if I do end up regretting it, I'll probably learn some sort of life lesson in the process.
Give the girl a gold star.
“If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.”
-- Mercedes Lackey
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