Regrets, I've had a fewUnlike Frankie-boy, I’m not all proudly, melodically defensive about my misbehaviors and paths not taken. I sing this tune more as, I imagine, Sid did – ironically.
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do , I saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way
"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”"
~ Kurt Vonnegut
In August I’ll be 60. I will have completed adulthood and entered the realm of old age. Like the rest of mi vida loca, I can and will butt into senior-hood in my own way. Of course. I seem incapable of following anyone else’s script, no matter how tried and true. I’m all contrary and pigheaded like that, don’cha know.
There’s so much life to look back on, to survey, at this point. I’ve made myriad+ mistakes, hurt undeserving friends and acquaintances, not taken best care of me, not grabbed enough brass rings BUT....I’ve worked hard at my own personal evolution. I like who I've become.
"The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all."~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes
Yes BUT…it still counts that I hurt some undeserving folk. When possible, I’ve apologized – sincerely and shit too. Often it was years later, after time and this swamp of a life gave me some perspective/taught me some lessons. I’ve not been able to say “SHEESH, I am SO damn sorry and I know that’s not enough and…and…and…” to every single person who suffered the slings, arrows and assorted exploding shrapnel of my outrageous and all too often thoughtless persona. Some folks, understandably, cut the cord, vanished. I understand – I’ve done that with a few former friends too. We’re all trying to survive the toxicities of life. Sometimes I’m the poison. Sometimes I’m the balm and every once in a rare grand while, I’m the antidote."If you don't have any regrets then you're probably a shithead."
~ Sherman Alexie
So then – regrets? I’ve had a few hundred or so but, HEY, I’m not itemizing/making spread sheet of my transgressions. I’m not, on a daily or even weekly basis, reliving and/or excoriating the shit outta myself. Nope. I’m just trying to learn, grok and be here now.
"The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are."
~ Fernando Pessoa
If you think about the things you regret, you'll likely find that they were more trivial than you remember them to be. If nobody got hurt, of course, there's nothing to regret at all.
ReplyDeleteI don't regret the "bad" things I've done. I regret all the "bad" things I was too ignorant or chickenshit to do, and for which it's too late now.
And that makes me wonder – what's really too late to do?
DeleteI will be 54 in August, still getting used to my status as middle-aged, although I've been in it for well over a decade! Does any of us ever stop seeing ourselves as 19 years old, still at the beginning of our adventure?
ReplyDeleteI think I am making progress figuring it out, though.
19 – DAY-UM, that was 7,000 lifetimes ago! :-) I think I was a guy then. Oh wait, that was Orlando. Nevermind.
DeleteSixty is not old. Old is like, ninety, or a hundred. I, of course, am a twenty year old wild-eyed, wild-haired Logger just back from the Army motorcycling down to Eugene to hook up with some hippie chicks 😎
ReplyDeleteDo take the time to appreciate the frost on the pumpkin.
Oh, and Sherman Alexie is a bit of a local. Met him a time or two, did a talk at the library recently. We, ahhh, come from the same neighborhood, so to speak. Lived just down the road for a while.
DeleteOh maaaaaaan, I KNEW I'd met you before! It was that April night in Half Moon Bay, wasn't it!?
DeleteFrosty pumpkins – yes indeedy, I will :-)
Alexie's one of my total fave authors – his poetry and his prose. I saw him speak, years ago when I still had hearing. It was FAB.
DeleteYou living just down the road/same neighborhood – his storyteller character Victor comes to mind and I'm envious.