Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Regret

  • With Hindsight….

    With Hindsight….

    What possible use is hindsight when the past is behind us and unchangeable?

    The failed relationships, the missed opportunities, the petty cruelties and jealousies. The things we could have done so much better 20 years down the road and the things we botched up so badly at the time.

    Regret is a wholly useless emotion in many respects. As self destructive as any of our less attractive states of mind but perhaps less harmful to those around us. Anger, envy, spitefulness and cruelty can do real harm now to others whereas regret with hindsight can only affect our own selves.

    And yet hindsight does have its uses. Taken to heart, considered, thought out and acted upon it can and should affect both the present and the future even if the past is forbidden to us.

    It is pointless to wax maudlin but at least we can try to stop making the same mistakes time and time again.  We can learn from the past; from our own personal past as well as that of our nation or world.

    Was it the United Nations which was founded on the principal of “never again”? It may not have met with huge success since its formation in 1945 but at least the attempt was made.

    At least humanity looked back on the terror on the terror of the Second World War and vowed to improve international relations. With hindsight could it have been prevented?  Well as we know hindsight does not work like that. But at least with the benefit of hindsight we can do better today and again tomorrow.

    So yes, we must look back. We must own up to our mistakes. We can not change our past but  hopefully we can change our future.

    At least, in the absence of strict determinism.

  • To Regret or to Reset

    To Regret or to Reset

    To regret is a useless emotion; it is a wallowing in despair and self pity.  Better by far to change, to achieve, to move forward, to put right.

    Easy perhaps for the comfortable, the well healed, the well adjusted.  Less so for the poor, the sick, the wretched.  The billions who live in squalor and wretchedness.

    It is a sad and “wicked” world in many ways but I am not entirely convinced that is anybody’s fault in particular.  We are all victims of our inheritance and our environment.

    Did Adolf Hitler have to murder 6,000,000 Jews? Well he certainly did not do it all on his own. And thus for all violence: it does not happen in isolation, it has cause and effect, it is part of us all, the responsibility of us all.  We must all regret it but equally we should all seek better.

    There is great regret in my life in an overall sense as well as a personal sense.  It is a world of great contrast: good and bad, beauty and intense ugliness, joy and despair.  I have not done my bit. I have not done enough.

    I could have done better, achieved more, made the world a happier place, seen greater fulfillment.

    Or perhaps not.  Intuitively the buddhist concept of endless re-birth strikes a chord.  Life after life we strive to get it right, live better until at last we are released from the cycle, from the giant hamster wheel that is existence.

    But regret, while you still have breath, is a wasteful extravagance, a futile and destructive luxury.  Even if you only live one lifetime it is never too late to put it right, to change, to achieve, to soar, to redeem.

    Even writing is a redemption of sorts. A catharsis. An admission of guilt and in a sense regret but an effort also to put right. To spread meaning perhaps.