.. regrets

In this little life, I have often experienced moments of regret - for the decisions I’ve taken and the ones that I haven’t, for the foods I have eaten and others that I have not yet tasted because they are different from what I grew up with. Regretting giving my heart to the people who I knew didn’t want it or taking others for granted. This little life we all share with each other, as I grow older, appears to be too rich on regrets, for people often blame themselves for things they have done or failed to do.

Some people view regret as a mental phenomenon resulting from our evolution as a species - an advantage for us as human beings to learn from our faults and errors and hold onto those ‘mistakes’ to avoid future ones, as a form of self-preservation and protection for our minds, bodies, and souls. I’m curious about when did we start labeling our lessons in life and the not-so-anticipated outcomes of particular decisions as regrets?

The word ‘regret’ carries a strong negative connotation and much pain, making it feel unfair to use it as tags for some of our life choices, memories, and experiences. Viewing our memories as something negative or unpleasant instead of as what was meant to happen to shape us into who we were meant to be all along, seems unfair to us just as much. Who would we be if we didn’t indulge in our ‘wrong’ decisions?

I’ve spent the past month and a half writing stories almost every week for this column but not finishing them for whatever reason. Until a few days ago, I was looking at this through the amber-coloured glasses of regret. I was filled with disappointment and deep despair - is there, not a single story I am able to finish and share? Each day dissolving into the nothingness of 'past time’ and every week to count creased my guilt.  This led me to a state of regret when it was now two weeks into the new year, and multiple unfinished drafts of writing were waiting to be completed. If I’ve learned one thing in the last twelve months, it is that there’s always a reason for everything that we do or don’t do. I know that whatever the reason, I wasn’t meant to share these stories I had started, or at least not yet. Perhaps I’m not ready to finish them, maybe I’m not ready to face my own self, which probably I’d need to do to complete them, maybe they are just meant to stay … incomplete. Is there anything in this life that is ever truly complete? Yet, even though I knew all this, I was dueling with regret once again..

Admittedly, I have not figured out how to overcome the feeling of regret when it overtakes my heart and mind. In such moments, I usually retreat into the recesses of my thoughts, attempting to rationalise the emotion by telling myself that regrets are simply a manifestation of the ego, an attempt to divert my attention away from the underlying reason for feeling regret in the first place. In these reflective moments, I try to the best of my strengths to view regret not as a self-indulgent sentiment but rather as a veil obscuring the lessons I need to take away from my choices. But if we follow the notion that regret is something that has occurred as a result of our evolution as beings, does this mean we’ve learned ‘how to regret’ because it was necessary for our survival? Does that mean we can unlearn ‘regretting’ and instead accept the outcomes of our decisions as what they are, as they are - without the need to change anything about them? Or is it a biological imperative, a tool that has been nested within our psyche from the very beginning of humankind to ensure our continual growth and adaptation on this earth?

No matter the origins behind regrets, there’s much more to life when we allow ourselves the freedom to make choices, even though they may lead us to regrets. Imagine how liberating it could be if we reframed the emotion of regret into a feeling of acceptance and understanding that this, whatever that is, is exactly what was meant to guide us toward our destined path. This isn’t to suggest that we can entirely avoid regrets; - sometimes the deepest regrets we’ll experience are ones that surface later in life, with roots reaching back to our childhoods. These are poignant recollections about actions taken or behaviours we’d expressed from a time when we lacked self-awareness, were unaware of our surroundings, and were oblivious that the adults around us were merely older versions of.. ourselves. And sometimes, these are the regrets that haunt us forever, even though we understand we were, after all… just kids.

NB: below, you will find a poem I wrote as a result of a regret that surfaced a couple of years ago - regret stemming from the pain over something I did as a child and will never have the chance to correct in my life - pushing my grandfather away.

things i’ll find inside my coffin instead of my body*

this was a tulip 

and there were the stones 

engraved with the names of my dogs

and the cats who have already lost their lives

then i see a piece of green glass   

from a bottle of Загорка

that Maria told me the librarian asked her to give me

and the rusty guitar strings i kept for all these years

the books lost between the postboxes of the london streets

that never got the chance to lay on my hands

and leave marks of navy-blue paint on my fingertips

there is the orange necklace that belonged to my grandmother

a brush 

with some leftover oil paint on it

freshly chopped grass from the Sea Garden

and a bobby pin

i always wonder where they go

some holographic  photos  i  never  got

the chance to take

and the buttons purposefully collected throughout the years

by my grandmother

tucked in her sewing cupboard

still in the purple tube box

with a Mickey Mouse label which almost resembled 

a plain white piece of paper with light blue traces across it

- the mark of time

penguins

the first book i ever bought

a pencil

and black leather A6 notebook 

and there was an earing 

from my mother —

a lock from my dad’s hair and the postmarks he collected for years

some cashews

- why not

the sailor doll — 

wearing his моряшка тениска and wide-legged trousers 

which were once the colour of the depths of the ocean

the round head used to have two rusty orange sphere spots

indicating the blush of his cheeks — 

which are now

a shade slightly darker than a few grains of boiled wheat scooped together

he - the doll

was brought by my grandfather

from somewhere overseas 

when he was a sailor himself

a traveller

just like the traveller, i myself am

and this reminds me of how horrible children could be —

as i pushed away the doll back at my grandfather’s hands

and closed the rear door window of the car 

to separate us

*poem from my unpublished poetry collection ‘here, there and elsewhere’.

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