The other day a young colleague came to see me. Even the COVID mask could not hide her grin, nor office protocol suppress the skip in her step. She was ecstatic because she had just been promoted. She has a loving and supportive husband and will soon be able to pay off the mortgage for an apartment.
Her life, more or less, is where she wants it to be. In a moment of self- reflection and satisfaction, she said, “I wish I had known four years ago that this is what my life would be down the road. I wasted so much time feeling insecure and scared of the future. If I had known, I would have enjoyed all those years.”
Amid the joy, there is regret
As we journey through life, we do look before and after, and even our sweetest songs are tinged with the melancholy of opportunities lost, of needless suffering and angst.
I, too, have my share of regrets. In this basket of ‘might have been’ is a doctoral degree, a career as a writer, a professional stage director. I also wish I had applied myself better in college, honed my interests and gifts more rigorously. I wish I had been emotionally stronger and shut out the white noise of teenage emotions. I wish I could have known that it didn’t matter and the future beckoned brightly. I wish, I wish….
But is it precisely the fact that we fell by the way, that we felt trapped and vulnerable, or made the wrong choices; that provided the knock we needed to pick ourselves up, gird our loins and do better? Do we owe our current reality to our resilience and dedication, consequent to being wounded in the travails of life?
I bat for this
Our mistakes, in fact, became the cornerstones of our success. The chisel of time and tragedies shapes us to become the person we want to be. A child walks after several falls; and so do we learn to run after faltering along the way. We learn to “manage” life and ourselves, we make the best of our opportunities and of ourselves, having known the worst. Adversity, in fact, makes a man/woman of us.
I am delighted to note stories of courage and strength: a dear friend has built a formidable reputation as a businesswoman from the ashes of her broken marriage; she is an exemplary portrait of a resilient, gritty woman who did not allow her regrets and failures to define her.
I have known innumerable students who have succeeded after many setbacks to achieve their dreams: the academically challenged student who became a stage actor, the student who took a couple of gap years to clear the medical entrance examination, the physically challenged student who is an expert coder.
The man in the mirror
But what of the regrets that bother us, that cause us unease, shame and guilt? The choices we made when we were not at our finest, the hurt we caused that we cannot undo, the people we betrayed and most importantly, when we let ourselves down, “the man in the mirror”, whose unfaltering, dispassionate judgement impales our conscience/self-esteem? Memories of our misdeeds that we must live with, guilt that we carry, seemingly forever; mar our present.
The most common regrets are undue harshness with children, cheating on a partner, ignoring old parents, betraying an old friend or a business partner.
What can we do to expunge these regrets, knowing that the past cannot be erased?
A friend cannot forgive himself for sending his old mother to live in his home country, looked after by relatives. When she died, he could not return home, even for the last rites.
His guilt has eroded his physical and mental health. Nor medicines, nor counselling have soothed his troubled body or soul. Even as he rationally explains his choices, the heart has its own language. He is tormented by regrets.
My son’s grief at losing a beloved pet as a teenager has never been assuaged because he believes that he could have done better in taking care of her. Recently, after more than two decades, I heard him say, “Mum, we didn’t know better back then”. That is as much forgiveness as he allows himself.
What is the balm for such regrets?
I believe that we must be kinder to ourselves, appreciate our fragility as human beings, and be comforted in knowing that the acknowledgement of our regret is a vital factor in our personal growth. Because we regret, we will change. As much as we suffer, we will amend.
Our heartfelt regrets transform us to do better: often great service is born from a cycle of misdeeds followed by remorse. It is this dichotomy that makes us believe that the world will continue to evolve into a better place.
Rashmi Nandkeolyar is the Principal and Director of Delhi Private School Dubai. She has authored several books for children.
