posted
How many times have you said "I'm Not Sorry" or "I have no regrets"? I've caught myself saying it a few times. Sometimes that's true. but sometime's it's me trying to fool myself because that's the "mature" response. We are expected to be completely in control or at ease with decisions we make, so when shit falls apart on us, be it in a relationship, or some other foolish situation, we suck it up and take responsibility not only for the actions, but we in essence say we'd do the same thing all over again.
well for me that is not necessarily the case. many times that i've said this, inside while trying to convince myself the truth prevailed and kicked me in the brain saying "what the hell are you talking about? if you had this to do all over again you'd run the **** away!"
So why do we say that we always have no regrets about anything we do. maybe its true, but in my experience i've found more often than not when i've said this or some variation of this. or i've said "i'm not sorry", that i spent countless hours, days, and weeks convincing myself of this....
that is all.
[ June 09, 2004, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: Ben ]
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posted
I don't know, because I'm not like that. There is almost no situation or period of my life that I don't have regrets about.
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posted
In my own life, rarely does a true regret come in.
My philosophy has always been "You make your choice, you pay the price." Sometimes the price isn't what you thought it was going to be, but if you look at it that way, regret doesn't come into the picture as often IMO.
Could that be where your "not sorry" feeling comes from too?
posted
Once, when speaking to a large group of people, I said something like: "...and if there is anyone here that I have offended or insulted in any way, I'm sorry....but you probably deserved it."
Most people laughed. Several, however, of those with the permanent constipated looks on their faces were offended by this.
I wasn't surprised.
Posts: 279 | Registered: May 2004
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posted
You know, once after watching Eternal SUnshine of the Spotless Mind, I felt inspired to begin an essay concerning Regret. I started it, but something shiny wandered by and I got distracted. This was all that was written at that point:
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Regret.
A common phrase used by perpetual optimists is that of "No regrets!". It's a phrase that I think gets bandied about a bit more than it really should, by people who don't necessarily understand the full implications of it.
First, let's see what the dictionary definitions of 'Regret' are.
1. To feel sorry, disappointed, or distressed about. 2. To remember with a feeling of loss or sorrow; mourn.
Most people, when they toss out the phrase, are referring to the way they currently live their life. "I don't regret the way I'm living now.". And although this may be what the phrase means to you, it is not what most people will think when they hear you say it - even those who say it themselves with that meaning in mind.
Humans are strange creatures. We will do or say something with a particular intention in mind, but if someone else does or says the same thing, we often times take it to mean something completely different than our own way we usually handle that phrase or action. It's contradictory. It's illogical.
It's simply Human.
Unless, of course, it's something you think about it. I'm the kind of person who tends to think about and critique and analyze beyond the point of sanity. I view it as a mixed blessing - it's a wonderful gift for a writer to have, but it can be far more detrimental in the way one handles interpersonal relationships. Everything said and done has a plethora of meanings suddenly clawing out at you - even if you KNOW the correct intent behind the action, you have the others pawing at your brain, presenting dangerous 'what-if' scenarios enough to drive a person mad.
But we're tangent-ing here. Somewhat. Let's stray back from the personal apologetics and go back into what I was discussing before - the way the people who think 'No Regrets' means 'I Have Never Regretted Anything I Have Ever Done'. Which is decidedly VERY different from a similar SOUNDING statement, "I Don't Regret Doing Anything I Have Ever Done"
---
And of course right as I'm about to get into the meat of the discussion, I get distracted. Maybe I'll keep working on it... and maybe I won't.
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posted
I'm trying to think about what things I've even said "I'm not sorry" about (as far as things other people seemed to think were wrong, I mean). I don't think I say it that often. Maybe (very lightly--just hard enough so that it wasn't a gentle caress) slapping Sam last semester--but I'm really not sorry that I did it. I'm sorry he was immature enough to take it out on Rachel. I'm sorry I was viewed as a blameless puppet. I'm not sorry I gave him a wake-up call.
Maybe if I had to relive that night (got to, rather--it was, on the whole, a fairly good time, not the part with Sam, but the rest of it), I would slap him again, just this time add "I'm doing this because I'm ****ing pissed at you, not just because you're hurting and insulting Rachel, but because you're hurting and insulting me when you tell people our friendship is fine when we aren't even speaking." It probably wouldn't have changed anything, though. And it's still not the slapping I regret, since he wasn't at all hurt and it was just a symbolic gesture more than anything else.
Okay, I realize that I left out all of the backstory there. It's too detailed for me to want to go into right now--basically one of my closest friends had been treating his ex like dirt all semester, and wouldn't listen to any of us when we told him why his behavior was horrible and to please not do it again. Hmmmm. He actually said a lot of things like "I'm not sorry."
Okay, now I'm trying to think of something I've said "I'm not sorry" about that I really am sorry about. And I can't think of any. I'm much more likely to say "I'm sorry" about something I'm not (pretty much only to my mother, a survival strategy it took way too long for someone of my supposed intelligence to learn).
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posted
Unless it's something you can learn from, there's no point in having regrets. If I didn't make a conscious attempt not to, I'd regret my life away and wouldn't have time for anything else. So what's the point of dwelling? Besides, the worse the regretable moment is, the better story it will make later.
[ June 09, 2004, 11:40 PM: Message edited by: Jen ]
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posted
I am going through a divorce right now. Even so, I don't regret marrying her. I regret how it's turned out, but I don't regret that I married her, or any of the good times. I regret the bad times, and the things I did wrong. I regret the pain I feel due to her actions. But I don't regret that I married her.
Would I do it again? I don't know. I can see now that there were serious problems all along that we both ignored, hoping they would go away. Now that I know better what to look for, I may be better prepared for the future. . . but I still don't know that I would do it again.
But I still don't regret my marriage.
Posts: 1323 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I use to have a lot or regrets, but years ago I reached a point in my life where I was tired of always second guessing myself, and tired of making excuses. So I came up with my "no regrets" policy, and it has worked out pretty well.
"I'm sorry" all too often is a cop out, a way of assugue our guilty feelings after having done something we knew was wrong, or something we knew would hurt someone we love. We feel that if we are "sorry" then everything is ok, and will be forgotten.
To me, "I'm sorry" means "I won't do this again", so I don't say it unless I mean it that way.
Regrets are a lot worse than "sorry's", buy an order of magnitutde. Basically, I feel that a lot of the time what we call regrets are us feeling sorry for ourselves. Often this is fueled by hindsight, which is annoying at best.
I found myself doing nothing rather than doing things that I was afraid of regretting. That meant doing a lot of nothing!
The only things that I feel I should regret are events where I learned nothing new, reguardless how they worked out. If I learn something about relationships, then even if it doesn't work out it was worth it. If I end up hating my job, but I learned a skill or gained expereince, then it was worth it.
Now that I am married, I would regret hurting, or getting a divorce, if it were to happen. I guess I just stopped having little regrets about things that weren't really that important. The more important something is, the more I night regret it not working out.
If I waste my time, or really hurt someone I love by being selfish or ignorant, then I feel regret. True regret, not just jumped-up self pity, or second guessing.
posted
well, see? you all say you shifted to a "no regrets" policy. but how true is it...i dunno, i have a hard time believing somebody can be in conscious control of "regrets"
"how many sorrys does it take, well i'm sorry, yea so sorry!"
[ June 10, 2004, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: Ben ]
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posted
mph, I think having regrets about everything might need some adjustment. I'm rather prone to regrets myself, but not everything. I don't regret having any of my kids, though I may regret not being more financially prepared. In fact, I think the vast majority of my regrets touch on the financial.
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posted
Now, I never said that I feel regret about everything. I don't regret having my kids. But I *do* regret some of the mistakes I have made with them.
In other words, I would do things differently a second time. In many aspects of my life, the changes would be small. For some others, they would be drastically different.
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posted
Speaking for my husband, I don't think he meant that the regrets everything, only that most times and seasons in his life have things in them that he regrets.
posted
Okay, that's actually the very thing I was thinking is "I know you have kids... (not to mention being married)." I imagine you might also mean that while some things are good, it's possible to imagine a way they could have been better. But I don't really consider that regret.
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posted
Yes, there are some things that I have done that I regret doing, and if given the same circumstances now, I would not do them the same way.
However, there are few circumstances where I honestly knew better and screwed up on purpose. I may regret that I wasn't more humble/honest/diligent/gentle/charitable, because maybe if I were things might have turned out differently, but I was doing the best I could.
quote:Too long I've been afraid of Losing love I guess I've lost Well, if that's love It comes at much too high a cost!
For a fleeting moment Anna heard her voice as if she were a little girl. It shouldn't have stirred such memory. Dinah had never asked for advice when she was young; why should it seem familiar now? Yet it was her little girl beside her, and Anna was her wise mother, if only for a moment. She must answer her daughter truthfully. "I treasure my regrets," Anna said. "I worked so hard to earn them. They're all that makes my memories worth keeping."
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