No Regrets?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like she's aged ten years in the past year. The side effects of a pandemic life are many and varied, but for me, one of the harshest is the onset of what I call "pandemic dreams." My nighttime theatre has taken on a new kind of loneliness, despair, confusion, and most notably, regret.

I'm not going to bother you with the details of last night's dream production, simply because nobody really wants to hear about someone else's dreams. But I will tell you that it featured long-dead loved ones, fear, disloyalty, homelessness . . . and ultimately, regret. I mean, the regret was visceral and lingering, enough so that I thought I should confront it in a blog post.

For decades, I have believed that the main goal in this earthly life is to arrive at the end of it with as few regrets as possible. And for the regrets that refuse to disappear from memory, to have learned something valuable from them. Sometimes that's easy, like my regretting that as a child, I used to pick my nose at night and wipe the boogers on the wall. What did I learn when my mother discovered this? Perhaps the wisdom of keeping a box of tissues next to the bed? And I surely regret (at around age 10) smearing hot tar from the newly paved street onto my best friend's bathing suit, a terrible deed for which I have no explanation. A lecture from her mother chastened me, but the fact that I still remember this lapse of judgment from about 60 years ago tells you something about the power of regret. When I was a teenager, I shoplifted a package of hair ribbon bows from a local store. Despite my attempts at assuaging my guilt in the confessional closet and obediently reciting my Hail Marys at the altar, I have carried that regret with me forever. But I learned something: don't friggin' shoplift!

Some regrets don't involve others at all, but that doesn't lessen them. I never learned to swim. And that may be my biggest regret. I've collected quite a laundry list of reasons why I never learned, culminating in a fear of deep water, but I also know that had I confronted this liability head-on many years ago, I would not have the regret now. Instead, I've lived with it, missing out on pleasures and adventures too numerous to list. But I can assure you, my three kids learned how to swim early on, with one of them spending her summers lifeguarding for several years. Yes, I've snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Galapagos Islands, but it was scary as hell for me. The only reason I was able to survive was that people who love me encouraged me, gave me lessons, and swam by my side. But the regret lingers. Maybe I'll be a sailor in my next life.

I've hurt people. I've hurt people I loved. Can any of you say you have never done the same? This life is messy, isn't it? Certainly, I regret having hurt anyone, but perhaps that is counteracted by having helped some others along the way? Forgiveness and redemption, two graces that are hard to achieve, but assist in healing our fragile countenance.

In the song "Title and Registration" by Death Cab for Cutie, lyricist Ben Gibbard sings, "And here I sit where disappointment and regret collide . . . " With apologies to Ben, I'm going to end this post with this:

And here I sit where acceptance and regret collide.