No Regrets

Consolations, by the poet David Whyte, is one of the most deeply evocative books I’ve read.

In it, Whyte riffs on 52 common words in a most uncommon manner. I keep the book on a side table next to my writing chair. Occasionally, I open it to a random page and read what Whyte’s keen eye found.

Recently, I opened the book to the word regret.

Here’s what Whyte wrote:

“(An) achingly beautiful word,…almost never heard, except where the speaker insists they have none…to admit regret is to understand we are fallible…to admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present…for sensing a tide where we missed a previous one, for experiencing timelessness with a grandchild where we neglected a boy of our own.”

Wow! I’ve always felt I have no regrets. Whyte sees right through that!

He continues:

“To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are even in an average life. Fully experienced, regret turns our eyes, attentive and alert to a future possibility lived better than our past.”

There were years when I was so buried in the intensity of my job that I’m not sure I could have correctly named the primary school grades our kids were in. Do I regret that? Not really; there’s a price to be paid for success. I will say I learned from the experience. You better believe I’m in the moment now when playing with our granddaughter.

I love Whyte’s line about losing control of the story we tell about ourselves like our shortcomings are due to unfairness or something we aren’t responsible for. Who doesn’t have such a story? I love music. I suppose I regret never becoming proficient at guitar. But it wasn’t my fault. I simply don’t have the talent (see what I mean?)

Whyte claims, “Sincere regret may in fact be a faculty for paying attention to the future.” That puts the ball back in our own court. Rather than a revisionist history, regret signposts the journey that lies ahead.

Whyte’s definition of regret gave me a lot to think about, but in the end, I still have to admit I don’t have any. Things happened that I would like to change. Still, circumstances being what they were, I doubt I would behave differently, even if given a mulligan.

It takes an entire life to learn how to live, which is okay so long as we keep learning.

No regrets!

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