Regret

A lyrical take

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By: JJStudios

It would be fair to assume that regret is one of the most fascinating and universal equalisers of the human experience. It often leaves us interrogating the past with critical eyes, rueing what could or should have been. There is a rather uncanny seductiveness about exploring the unlived parts of our life, as we relentlessly prod into the delicate gossamer of historical possibilities and opportunities. The ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ constantly reverberate in the deepest crevices of our minds tantalising our senses to give it the attention it craves, urging us to ask, “what if we could do it all over”?

I see regret as a form of subliminal grieving - an inward sensation of perceived loss; a loss of opportunity or chance, that has, in our eyes, sailed past the point of grasp. Regret, to me, wears the messy face of grief where one does not simply ‘move on’ but rather ‘live on’, floundering through life’s trivialities but ever conscious of the emotional void left by an unfulfilled intention or aspiration.

But here’s the thing. Regret - like all substrates of grief - doesn’t drench or drown; it simply imposes. Like a pallid cloud, it hangs in the air, always lingering but never entirely vanishing. So much so that eventually one gets used to living with the cloud hovering somewhere in the vast terrain of the subconscious. I’m reminded of Virginia Woolf’s lyrical reflections in ‘The Waves’, “we saw for a moment laid out among us the body of the complete human being whom we have failed to be, but at the same time, cannot forget”.

The question then is what do we make of it?

You see, to me at least, regrets are not scars we wear from the choices we make. Instead they are decorated moments when we are brave enough to stare squarely at history and celebrate every revelation that comes from the hundreds of mistakes we will make and continue to make, day after day and the myriad of unlived experiences that float past in the stream of life.

The truth is we have unlived lives for an array of reasons ranging from societal constrains to events that force our hand to live a certain way. The playground of possibilities available to us eventually simmer down over time as life has an uncanny way of becoming increasingly singular with age. But yet as our lives thrum with the knowledge of who we haven’t become, there remains an intuition to find meaning in what’s never happened. These white spaces and blank slates have a didactic purpose; they brew within a sense of gratitude for what we have and who we are.

Perhaps then, regrets are neither fatal or glorious. They offer no structured reassurance of a better present or future. Out of the burning embers of regret and its associated grief arises an ashen humility; that we’ve allowed our vulnerability to clarify who we are, the deepest darlings and abhorred devils that reside within. And if this realisation is properly appreciated, the fearsome teeth of regret loses its bleak sharpness, making space for precious memories that form the essence of our being.

Let your imagined selves linger and speak with your present, because together they make up the central brush strokes of your perfectly imperfect self-portrait. The ladders unclimbed, the roads not taken, the risks averted; regret is ever so ugly and yet so glorious, so damning and yet so brilliant.