Even for me, today was pretty uneventful. I slept in late once again, got up, did not much of anything for a few hours, and then I started working on a picture. After a short time I got sick of working on the picture, so I decided to do some writing.
Specifically, I started working on a story that’s been kicking around in my head for about 18 years.
I’ve made a few attempts at writing it over the years, typing out a handful of fragments here and there, writing some specific scenes, but not the overall story.
Actually, it’s not just one story, either. If all were to go according to plan, it would be a rather epic collection of stories encompassing 50,000 years and spanning across 10 very thick volumes.
That is, at least, the plan, though as I once mentioned I seldom make plans, since they almost never work out the way I want them to.
In any case, perhaps inspired by the fact that I did complete a novel (such as it is) last month (For those of you who may be new to Threshold, this extremely rough draft of a novel can be found at www.15000years.blogspot.com), and by the pictures I’ve been working on of late, which have been of characters from the story, I decided to take a new crack at it.
I did get a fair amount written, but ultimately I ended up breaking away from my keyboard, or at least from my efforts in furtherance of the story while I was at the keyboard.
I have a habit of doing that; calling it quits when things are still going fairly well, and last month’s efforts didn’t really do much to change that habit.
This was something other than my usual laziness, though. Many elements of the story I was working on are, while not exactly based on them, at least informed by certain experiences in my life, most of which, while not exactly traumatic, are rather unpleasant to think about.
So writing this story was bringing up a lot of unpleasant memories, and it wasn’t proving especially cathartic, so I called it quits for a little while, hoping that at some point I’ll be slightly better equipped to deal with the memories.
As I said, these aren’t traumatic memories, as I really don’t have any of those, they’re just…unpleasant. Mostly they’re kind of embarrassing, and downright humiliating, for a variety of reasons, which I have no intention of getting into here.
I will say, though, that much of the reason for the embarrassment stems from the fact that some of these experiences were born out of teenaged angst, and memories of that tend to be humiliating for virtually everyone, though at times it seems as though much of my life, particularly that period, has all been part of some endless parade of embarrassment and humiliation.
In any case, there are also a lot of regrets mixed in there with the embarrassing memories: regrets about foolish behavior, foolish choices, and just general foolishness.
Sometimes I think that if it weren’t for regrets I wouldn’t have any memories at all.
Of course, not all of my memories are bad, but the thing about regret is that it can often spill over and taint other memories, so essentially when I look back on the past I do so through regret-tinted glasses.
One thing that I'm sure everyone has encountered in life is the fact that there many people spout various philosophies about living a life free of regrets, many of them claiming that they regret nothing.
These people will often browbeat you if you express regret in their presence, since, apparently, it is acceptable to make people regret having regrets. It's sort of like how positive, happy people will try to make you feel bad about feeling bad and not being positive and happy...
In any case, I’m of the opinion that anyone who claims to have no regrets is a liar, a fool, or a sociopath.
We all regret something, even if it’s something as mundane and trivial as ordering the soup rather than the salad (or vice versa). Sometimes we regret standing up too quickly, or going outside with wet hair, or, quite likely, you’ll regret wasting your time reading today’s long-ass boring Threshold entry.
In the course of even the most straightforward and uneventful of days we have to make altogether too many decisions to be able to avoid regretting something to at least some degree.
I don’t, however, intend to suggest that all regrets are created equal. For example, I don’t lump the regret I feel for eating too much today and not exercising yesterday into the same category of regret as my failed marriage (Which is a regret that is itself composed of all kinds of other regrets that themselves fall into different categories), or not telling a certain girl that I was in love with her (or, conversely, actually telling a different girl that I was in love with her).
So there are clearly different kinds, and intensities, of regrets, but my point is that if you really look, I’m sure you’ll find something that you regret.
Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe there really are some people who live their lives free of regret. If so, more power to them, I guess.
In any case, I will concede that there are some of us who have more to regret than others, or who at least regret things more, whether legitimatley or not, and even if we try to go through life planning not to have them…well, we already know what often happens to plans, don’t we?
I think that, compared to whatever the average may be, I probably have more regrets than most, but I’m sure there are millions, if not billions, of people who have many more, and much bigger, regrets than I do.
And ultimately I don’t think that my life is really all that negatively impacted by my regrets. For one thing, since I am so accustomed to experiencing it, fear of regret seldom influences my decisions, since I tend to have a damned if I don’t, damned if I do approach to life and simply gravitate instead towards the path of least resistance.
Besides, as is evidenced by some of the writing I did today, my regrets provide fertile grounds of experience that I can cultivate as material for my stories.
And in recent years, primarily since I quit drinking, I’ve had a lot less to regret.
Even so, there are times, like today, when my regrets will sneak up from behind and wallop me, but it never lasts long, and eventually I’m able to move on, and I live to regret another day.
As for the “no regrets” crowd, I would have to say that if you truly have no regrets you’ve either lived a charmed life, or an incredibly boring one.
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