No Regrets
I have often said that the only lasting emotion in human life is regret. While many would vehemently disagree with the aforementioned statement, they will realize upon self-introspection that it is indeed the truth. In our lives, we often find that we tend to fluidly move through the different emotions that are generally a psychological reaction to the events that transpire in our lives. Upon keen observation, we find that none of these emotions are stable enough; be it happiness, anger or sadness; we always tend to fluidly change course of our psychic reactions based on the things that life throws at us. However, if you but introspect deeply, you shall realize that there is one thing that stays with us through all the different phases of life; that emotion is regret.
Man is a greedy beast; simply put, he always wants everything in his life and he wants it right now. Now strictly speaking, that is not such a healthy attitude of living, but there are people who work it insanely well and are generally speaking greatly successful in their lives; however there is a drawback to this success; and that drawback comes in the lack of satisfaction. We often find that people who are rich in success lack the basic amount of satisfaction pertaining to life; they always feel regretful that even though they have the world at their feet, they don’t have that one thing that matters the most; that they don’t have peace and satisfaction in life. The reason for this apparent lack of satisfaction and the reason for their unbelievably quick rise to success is indeed the same; it is hunger; it is desire and it is the perpetual sense of incompleteness that consumes them.
Such emotions, such concentrated desires, bring with themselves a great amount of restlessness and longing; that restlessness hardly ever goes by, and the person himself always ends up feeling destitute, lonely and filled with regret. That regret in the end can consume his life entirely and end up sending the individual on a self-destructive streak. True spirituality indeed teaches us to rise above that regret and live life with a clearly defined sense of determination and satisfaction. Spirituality indeed teaches us that it is perfectly fine to have desires, for desires in the end are responsible for driving us to achieve a better life; our desires are the reason of our evolution; and regret in the end is the complete undoing of all that evolutionary process.
Ultimately, the one thing that we need to clearly realize about regret is that it is nothing but pondering over the past; that feeling regretful about anything will ultimately get you nowhere. In cases where you have erred, your regret would be the motivation for you to seek redemption; for you to resolutely act in a better way in the future; however once you have made that change and once you have corrected that mistake, the regret should shed off on its own accord. The worst form of regret is that which pertains to action rather than inaction; at times it would be fine to be regretful of something that you did not do; but to be regretful of something that you did, is nothing but utter stupidity. Once the act is done, once it is committed, it is our responsibility to determinedly take that act to fruitful completion, whatever that may be. Once an individual thinks and acts in such a way, he would realize that he hardly feels any sense of regret in his life; the most important thing to know is that you shall reap what you sow; no matter how you feel about what you did, you will get the rewards for your virtues and the retributions for your sins..
Back to Article.
admin | 
March 13, 2011 10:07 pm
2 Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By medha, March 14, 2011 @ 11:48 am
Good article! I personally feel that regret is a useless thing.There are pros &cons to every thing.If u find that u suffered very badly by taking a particular action, at the same time there had been some addition to your understanding that u made a mistake & that it should not be repeated.I think the suffering is the price of knowledge that you get.So one should remember the lesson that is learnt.One should not feel bitter about the sufferings he comes across during the course of life as the more u suffer the more u get the insight about the life’s reality.you grow mentally when you face the hardships.The bitterness brings regrets with it.So don’t be bitter about life is what I would say.
By manjusha, March 15, 2011 @ 5:12 pm
very good.