Regrets, I’ve Had a Slew

This is the 600th post on this site. That’s counting regular posts published on Sunday, Mittwoch Matinees that appeared on Wednesdays, and a guest post seven years ago nearly to the day (see Trump, China, and the Year of the Rooster). To celebrate, I originally thought I’d write about the father of the “Big Bang” theory, a Jesuit priest from Belgium, Georges LeMaître, SJ (1894-1966), whose birthday was just a few days ago.

A post like that would have been forward looking what with the universe expanding like a rubber band, but I’ve chosen instead to look backward. I know that runs counter to conventional wisdom as well as all those posts referencing Marcus Aurelius and Seneca on social media, but those have become tedious and about as helpful as a popular psychologist’s admonishment to clean up my room.

I am “looking backward” not because it reminds me of a late nineteenth-century novel of that name by Edward Bellamy I wrote a report on in college, but because I have created a character in my own novel who keeps a handwritten list of regrets in the nightstand by his bed. And this character, to say the least, has been on my mind lately. In fact, I can’t take a piss without running into him in the bathroom. It’s most inconvenient.

The character’s list is divided into “Major Regrets” and “Minor Regrets,” sort of like a baseball franchise. Minor regrets include not learning Morse Code, shorthand, typing, and playing the piano. If you have been following this blog for any length of time, the regret about typing may sound familiar. I have written about it three or four times, the latest being Still Can’t Type, Still Crazy. On the other hand, at no point in the novel does the character regret not learning the piano, and at no time does a piano appear. Tango music is about the closest it comes. I could have added tap dancing to the list, except the character is a priest and any scenes with him tap dancing would have descended quickly into buffoonery.

I, too, have a list of major and minor regrets. Neither is identical to the priest’s, although they overlap. Besides typing, I am interested in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, knife fighting, dancing, and piano, not all at the same time, mind you. But forget Mozart piano concertos. I have in mind telling a would-be piano instructor that I want to learn both kinds of music: boogie and woogie, thus harking back to a similar line in The Blues Brothers (1978) about country and western music.

You can see how the problem of minor regrets is easily solved. Rearrange your schedule, practice time management, commit yourself to the hard work of learning something new. It’s all possible, even if you have little aptitude for the thing in question. It doesn’t matter, but it does take time, in some cases a lot of time. After all these posts, I’m still learning how to write for and manage a blog site.

Major regrets are something else entirely. They often involve career, family, education, relationships. How about the regret of doing something stupid or exercising poor judgment? This is where Marcus Aurelius can actually help. Sometimes, all it takes is having enough discipline to control yourself, curb the tongue, or walk away. I say “all” as if it were easy, but doing so could spell the difference between tragedy or happiness. But what if, despite controlling yourself, you end up with the wrong spouse, in the wrong career, at the wrong school, or in debt to the wrong person?

Once I took a job as an editor for a business journal and knew instantly that it was the wrong job for me. I could even smell it. The problem was that I did not listen to my gut but went with the delusion my mind had created, because I needed the money and logically the job was ideal both for my career and family, or so I thought. The result? Six months later I was unemployed and depressed. My family went through hard times as well, but I was young and had time to make a comeback.

You hear that a lot. Time is the one commodity that you can’t get back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. There are no do-overs. I have been lucky, though. I have done a few things over, including marriage and career. It’s never too late to start something, although you may be limited in what you can accomplish and the kinds of things you can do. I don’t expect to keep boxing twenty-year-olds forever. Law school and a career in politics are out of the question as is the priesthood, which probably explains the creation of that character. Yet opportunities exist. I just have to find them or create them from scratch, limited only by my imagination and energy.

The thing to regret is not taking the risk, not trying. Being your own entrepreneur and a pioneer are ways of altering time even if not turning back the clock. It takes a mental realignment and the refusal to be pigeonholed. But it also requires relinquishing control to God, believing that God knows what’s best even if you don’t see the purpose. It’s a delicate balance of taking control of your life while surrendering the outcome without guarantee that things will turn out the way you want. They may not, but they may turn out better. It’s a matter not of keeping a list in the nightstand, but of ripping it up and living in faith.

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Image credits: feature by Jan Canty; dunes by Dan Grinwis on Unsplash. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”