"... forget regret / or life is yours to miss" - Rent, 'No Day But Today'

Long ago, I wrote that for one to be assured of their happiness, one must know that the way one has acted was the right action in that situation. What I didn't understand then, but have come to realize since, is that that is impossible, and a foolish notion. We don't always do what we know is right.

First, as a good friend pointed out immediately, my mistake was to confuse knowing with believing. What a person requires for the purposes of certainty was not knowledge, but belief in possession of knowledge. Knowledge is presumed by the believer, but not necessary for belief or for relief from regret.

Second, it is impossible for one to have that kind of belief in one's self at all times, if not ever. All exist in a state of perpetual self-doubt when acting consciously.

As a younger person, I was fond of the song I quote above, perhaps because I had no context from which to judge the musical that tells us that we all have AIDS, having never seen the thing itself or heard any other pieces from it. I enjoy musicals unironically; the broad sweeps of emotional upheaval, the melodrama, and best of all, being able to catch the lyrics or at least the jist of what they say (the last of which separates musical from opera in my mind, poor unilingual that I am).

What the song's pithy lyrics impart, forget regret, I once endorsed, but now I reject their obvious interpretation, settling instead on my arcane self-definition. What is important about regret is how it alters us. My error was to think that a person feels justification immediately as they act. But as the French say, we all are more clever after the fact ("the wit of the staircase"). It is only after our lizard brains have had time to do their tricks that we can see things as they were, ourselves victims and They cruel oppressors. Only then do we apply our rationalization engine to spiritus mundi and arrive at the consideration of our decision points, where we might have taken a fork in the path and seen a different end result than the now inescapable present. Who we are is the price we paid to get what we thought we wanted in the past.

The purpose of regret, in other words, is to give us reason to make better decisions at our next decision point. We should do anything BUT forget our regrets. Dorian Gray lamented, in the end, the lack of feedback for his sins. Only he could see the effects of his actions on himself, but not constantly. He did not act differently. He did forget regret for a time, until he could no longer hide from it. Our regret, origination of pain, inspires us to think harder on those following occasions. Maybe tomorrow, one will act with more gravitas, or will forgive more or stronger transgressions, or won't stifle the winged words wound up within.

My spin then is this: forget that your regret seems to be for what you might have avoided. It isn't. You regret the good that you might have wrought, the gains you might have won, not the woe you reaped in due time. Forget that you have regretted in the past, insomuchas it prevents you from escaping more regret later. Don't allow it to fester, compounding your sins beyond counting. You are alive. You must act. You will do awful things that you regret. Be mindful of your capacity for harm to yourself and to others (one coin, two sides, even for the socipaths who damage their toys). In that knowledge, act. Act to achieve greater joy which prevents regret, rather than abstaining to avoid regret, or life is yours to miss.