I had an interesting conversation with a friend recently about regrets. Do you/I have any regrets about your/my life? Yes and no. When I said I regret buying my first house here in Nova Scotia she said that was just material things. Perhaps what I really regret is the state of mind that led me to make that kind of choice. (It was definitely the wrong place for me to be living and I put too much money into trying to make it workable and it did have serious ramifications until recently because it came from a deep misunderstanding about myself and how to conduct my life in the “adult” world.) But, I suppose, I do not regret what I have learned from the experience (and I hope, will try, never to do something like that again).
I recently read Ann Packer’s The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, an exquisitely crafted, beautifully written, thoughtful story, told in the first person, by Carrie, a twenty-three year woman who, engaged to marry her high school sweetheart, is suddenly (when he takes a dive into shallow waters, hits his head on rocks, and becomes a quadriplegic) faced with a struggle (even though the relationship was faltering anyway) between her loyalty to him and the need to follow her inner passions.
”Guilty,” I said. “I feel guilty. What does it say about me that I’d leave? What kind of person does it make me?”……….. ……..”The kind of person you are,” (her mother said)………”You do what you do. Not without consequence for other people, of course, sometimes very grave ones. But it’s not very helpful to regard your choices as a series of right or wrong moves. They don’t define you as much as you define them……….You could just as easily have stayed. But that wouldn’t make you a good person any more than leaving makes you a bad one. You’re already made, honey. That’s what I mean.” “And whose fault is that” I joked, surprisingly comforted. “I take credit for everything except your big feet.”
Carrie needs to learn the difference between walking away and moving forward. That she is not just the accumulation of the past but can be made anew over and over. Carrie wanted always to feel that there was something new up ahead. Her travels, inner and external, are intricately delineated through the details of her daily life and thoughts—from the details of sewing techniques to the observations of herself and people around her.
Carrie’s friend Lane asked her “Do you every wonder what your life would be like if your father had stayed around? If you’d even recognize it (your life)?”…………which left Carrie thinking “something along the lines of how events are so powerful—how they determine so much.”
On the deeper level of experiences, I agree it is not possible to state simply that something is good or bad, it all can be looked at from so many points of view. Yes, my life has been good when you/I add it up, the different parts. Yet so many of the parts have been so painful--created pain for me and for those close to me. So if I were to say I regretted anything, it would be the pain I have caused to those people. But since I cannot change that (and hoping not to sound like Pollyanna), all I can do is try to learn from those experiences. Because I cannot undo events, emotional or material.