he question is: Do we regret?
But the answer is that we don't actually have an answer. See, we think that we probably regret things all the time. Like way more than average. Being a perfectionist and a tad on the self-critical side, we often cringe at things we have done. Many is the time we have been driving along, observing the speed limit and singing to our favorite pop song when KABLOOEY! The image of some horrible uncouth indelicacy we said intrudes into our thoughts. Oh how we hate that memory. We want to erase it from existence. But being a staunch believer in a) horrible uncouth indelicacies and b) learning from our mistakes, we rarely -- if ever -- truly wish we could do things differently. Do we regret? Of course we regret. We regret nearly everything -- everything interesting, at least once. Do we regret? We regret nothing. We wouldn't have it any other way. It kind of hurts our head, this question.
So recently we found ourselves at dinner with a friend. An academic. And because he is an academic, and we are (we wish we could say it was subconscious) usually angling for ways to impress this academic (for reasons we will go into later) the "regret" conundrum seemed like a good candidate for a dinner discussion.
We begin like this: "And so this friend of mine, my best friend really, she says she has this policy of not regretting anything."
"Mm-hmm." The academic wipes soy sauce from his chin, places his hand on his square jaw.
"But then instead of that policy changing her behavior, she just does whatever and afterward tries really really hard not to regret it."
"Mm-hmm." He rubs the jaw, a few days unshaven.
"So then she asked me if I regret anything, and you know, I really didn't know."
"Interesting."
"Because I can see both sides. You know: Don't regret anything. That makes sense. Or like: Learn from your regrets. That makes sense too."
"True."
But by this time our mind was elsewhere, ensnared in something like cringes or regrets or whatever you want to call them, regrets that weren't specific so much as a big scratchy feeling, somewhere in the back of the throat -- a kind of scratchy tightening -- that made our dialogue less than lucid. And what were we regretting? Perhaps it was that evening in which substances were ingested by us and the academic and then certain long-held confessions of attraction were made by one party (hint: not the academic) which kind of dangled out there painfully. But then we don't really regret that evening, as it helped us see what we hoped was friendship-maybe-romance for what it was: friendship-really-just-friendship. And that enables us to have a nice, casual, friendly dinner with the academic, which usually helps us see that the academic, while great, isn't exactly our perfect match, and that allows us be normal and not freak out about how we look so we can wear these unremarkable but comfy pants and this baggy black shirt. So maybe we were regretting the way we let that confession of attraction well up, allowing these imaginary narratives about the academic to take on unrealistic dimensions, since we know that that is actually our biggest problem -- the curse of anticipation. The curse of imagination. But we can't actually say that we regret have an active mind, can we? No, no. So maybe we were regretting coming to dinner or wearing this dumpy outfit or maybe we just regret bringing up the question in the first place and how the academic doesn't seem interested by the question at all but just nods distantly, like he'd rather be somewhere talking about Radiohead.
We trudge on. "But so it turns out that regret, if you look it up in the dictionary, the definition is quite simple. The definition is to feel sorry or disappointed about something."
"Right."
"And so who doesn't feel that?"
"It's a semantic argument," he says, taking a swig of his Coke.
"Right. It's a semantic argument. Is that ... all it is?"
"Sure. You do what you do and then you can call it whatever you want. All of it has very little to do with so-called regret."
"Mm-hmm."
"That's it."
"Right."
Then we talk about Radiohead.
Oh, Julie, we wish we had better answers than this. We just think you should live as though you will regret nothing. What we mean is that you should never go into something going, "Will I regret this?" You should never use that as a deciding factor when you are wondering whether or not to do something. Because if you live as though you will regret nothing, then the answer to that question will always be NO. And then, if it ends up you DO regret something, it can just be a big surprise. And who doesn't like surprises?
I like surprises, that's for sure.