Why does one regret?
I regret I didn't say hi to that boy or girl I saw in the cafeteria last week.
I regret I didn't invest in Apple in 2008.
I regret I drove too fast and crashed, hurting myself and others just to chase my dopamine for a second of “good feeling”.
I regret I started smoking, and now I struggle to quit because it's unhealthy and expensive.
I regret I yelled at you over nothing.
I regret I…
What is regret?
It is the feeling of something you did not do or did in the past that you now think could have been in your favorable presence. And the word re-gret is the code as an explanation for that.
I understand the thought process and its movement. The way it brings that up in your memory, making a feeling of present pain.
I am questioning if regret has any sort of value to a man.
If you see and understand an act you did in the past that you do not like to experience again, and you also understand that now you have the ability in your repertoire, another tool in your toolbox, to use your memory, knowledge, experience to understand the root of the problem, which then dismantles the problem and makes you not do it again.
This makes sense to me.
But, when one regrets without the exploration of the regret, to see that you were an ignorant person with too few tools at the time to make another outcome is just a self-conflict that is detrimental to you.
It is a movie replaying over and over like a tire stuck in the mud spinning and spinning further into the dirt.
Why does this person regret a past act of something he could not help himself do? Feeling sad and repentant of the disappointment.
I'll tell you why;
Because the person in that very regret-state does not understand regret and its function.
This is the importance of exploration to the root of one's problem.
If one avoids it, leaves it, staying occupied trying to forget it, it will eventually come back because your mind, brain, and nervous system can not erase the past.
What it comes in contact with via your senses, it will perceive and store.
If one does not understand it and it is a problem, it will perpetuate.
Therefore, regret is of no use other than pain, if one does not understand it.
Understanding is everything,
and for those who parrot The Matrix when he says; “Ignorance is Bliss”,
remember that it is completely useless to you if you already are conscious of your ignorance. And if you are ignorant, then you don't see that you are ignorant.
And so,
because you cannot erase ignorance nor your consciousness of ignorance, the whole statement falls apart.
Therefore, there is nothing to regret,
Good night.
