Regret

They say you only really regret the things you don’t do, but on the contrary, I still don’t regret not going to Burning Man nor do I feel bad that I’ve never shaved my balls with a straight razor.

I do, however, harbor some regret that I gave up my dad’s Pittsburgh Steelers’ season tickets after he died.

So, it’s hard to say, although I will admit that I do regret whatever regrettable things I’ve done or not done over the years.  

If I could take back purposely spilling orange juice on my classmate Lexi Scoulas in fifth grade to prove to my friends that I didn’t have a crush on her (when, in fact, I did), I would and I also wish that would have spent all my savings buying Apple stock at .36 cents a share in 1995 instead of purchasing a used 1963 Plymouth Barracuda that I sold two years later for a  loss.

But that’s life, you know?  It’s impossible to make it to the end of one’s days with no regrets (unless, of course, the dementia really kicks in), so perhaps that best strategy is to not make things worse by regretting whatever regrets one does eventually have.

The Pragmatist philosopher, William James argues that our ability to feel regret is evidence that we have free will, because, after all, if you couldn’t have done otherwise than you did, why regret it?

That makes sense but it wouldn’t explain why you regret finishing that entire bag of pistachio nuts; once it was opened, there was obviously no alternative, after all.

Maybe it’s a matter of regretting the state of affairs that gives rise to the action that feels regrettable.  If that’s the case, then I guess what I regret most is the Big Bang.  If it hadn’t been for that fluctuation in the quantum field or whatever, then I never would have spilled that orange juice on Lexi Scoulas.

Or written this!