I now regret wasting my time travel trip by trying to get rid of Hitler rather than focusing on getting rid of Twitler.
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When I was a young lad, I was once at my grandparents’ house watching MTV. (We didn’t have cable at home.) My grandfather passed through the room, observed David Lee Roth doing his schtick in one of his solo videos, and asked, “Is that what you want to do when you grow up?”
My greatest regret is that I didn’t spring up and cry, “Yes! Yes! Thank you old man, for you have given me a mission in life. Humala beboola zuhbuhla zop zooby doobie doobie doo…” I don’t think I’ve ever really recovered from this failure on my part.
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I’ve long held this idea that what we hold in opposition to ourselves is as important as that which we love, and as much a part of who we are. I believe it’s as worthwhile to discerningly choose your regrets and enemies as your loves and friends.
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It’s interesting that so many regret the opportunities they didn’t take and that they didn’t follow the voice in their head more. Next they should ask people in the trauma ward and prison.
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On of the most satisfying uses of regret for me is raising kids; I always felt that I had to ignore my intuition when I was younger, and I had no confidence at all. While some people want to fulfil their dreams through their kids, for me it’s more that I want them to have a healthier childhood and be ready for adulthood. It’s the best feeling to see them comfortably passing milestones that I struggled with or that caused me a lot of anxiety.
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I thought pre-increment is preferable? or is C++ lore not applicable to human mindstates?
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But really, what’s wrong with that? Given the fact that memory is an active/creating process – we’re constantly rewriting and re-experiencing things, and not just remembering “how they are” – this doesn’t seem too bad to me. Memories are going to change. Changing for the best seems better than the opposite.
I just wish I could do it reliably.
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Those days are gone
You and I were young those summer nights
You’ll see the world diving for a girl you’ll never find
and then we’ll quietly grow old: the saddest story ever told.
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Having kids really throws a wrench into the “if I could do it all over” thing. I wish I could have a go at life with a couple of the people I’ve dated in the past; I wish I could see what it would have been like if I’d stayed in math; but in this world that ex I still think about has their own life to live and is doing fine without me. In that world, my children simply never exist.
I could imagine having genuine I’d-do-my-life-over-to-take-it-back regrets if I’d killed someone or done something similarly terrible, I guess.
Proposal:
Any attempt to find a special thing that humans do that animals don’t do (that isn’t confined to specific observable things like “make Skittles”) is doomed to be wrong.
We used to hold hands and the movie show but we’ll never hold hands again
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Ha! That story just brought to mind a memory from when I was about 14. I was sitting in the family room watching MTV. Boy George was singing “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” when my dad and his buddy walked into the room. My dad’s friend was a plumber from Ireland and he was smoking a pipe. He took the pipe out of his mouth, pointed it at Boy George and said (in a thick Irish accent), “Who the hell is THAT yo-yo?!”
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When I’m daydreaming those scenarios part of the deal with the devil is my kids come too.
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You have self restraint…WELCOME to the forum!!
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I have a few regrets.
Mostly involving my treatment of others when I was a younger (and dumber) person. I can recognize that my behavior then was the result of immaturity and led to growth by me into the person I am now- and so I find those regrets to be important points of change into a better person. So maybe I’d say their regrets that I value?
Learning how to function in a relationship is hard. And I totally made mistakes along the way.
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You’re making me think of a song that made me nostalgic when it first came out (and I wasn’t old then!):
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It’s crazy how much the kids affect it, eh? I mean, if I’d ended up with one partner instead of another, I could have still had kids (one of my close calls has kids about the same age as mine - it’s pretty reasonable to guess we’d have had kids). But they wouldn’t be the kids I have now. I can’t make that trade, even though I’d love those kids just as much as I love my kids, and I’d be just as incapable of giving them up.
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Thank you for welcoming me. 
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Thanks, I haven’t heard that in many years (maybe even not since the car only had an AM radio?)
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Probably! It’s funny how it feels nostalgic right down to its bones. It seemed like an old song even when it first came out (1968).
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