The P ublisher Po stulates
To regret, one must look to the past.
This can be beneficial if your purpose is
to learn from your mistakes. That is what
wise people do. Of course, a truly wise
individual also learns from the mistakes
of others. It is preferable to learn from the
mistakes of others for obvious reasons.
Also, it is highly unlikely that you will live
long enough to make them all yourself.
Another interesting thing about regret
is that many of our regrets are over things
that we never had any control over and
would not have changed if we had thought
to do so at the time. Likewise, some regrets
are for things that can only be realized in
hindsight after the outcome is clear, much
like the Sunday morning quarterback who
thinks after the pass was incomplete that
he should have run the ball. Looking in
the rearview mirror certainly can give
us a clearer idea of what we should have
34 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
done. However, by the
time we can see things
objectively, it is usually
too late.
The major problem
with regret is that
we have no way of
knowing how things
would have worked out
otherwise. Some regrets
are so obvious that if we
had the power to do
them over again, we
would do so differently,
but those are few and
far between. Most
of our regrets are for things that have
turned out differently than we thought
they would. In a way, regretting is a form
of wishful thinking, deluding yourself that
if you had done something differently,
everything else would have changed and
you would have had a perfect life. The bad
news is that this is not so. The good news
is that we have perfect lives as it is, no
matter what happens during them. Forget
your mistakes and regrets and rejoice in
whatever you have and whatever you have
done. As the film character George Bailey
learned, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” 9
Feeling sorry or
remorseful over
something that
has happened,
was done or left undone
is Webster’s definition
of regret. Personally,
it seems to me that
most people regret not
doing something more
than they regret the
things they have done.
Although many regret
not investing more in an
opportunity that turned
out to be profitable, even
more may regret not investing at all. To
regret that you invested in an opportunity
that failed is understandable, but to regret
not investing in a successful opportunity
seems a pure waste of emotion.
You should realize that the only people
who have never made a mistake are those
who have never done much. Each of us
tends to have a list of the mistakes we have
made. Strangely, some of those mistakes
have been made more than once. Often,
that is due to the fact that as optimists, we
like to think, “This time it will be different,”
while we use this to justify why we are
again doing whatever failed to work at an
earlier time. Being optimistic is probably
one of man’s greatest assets. It allows us
to get back up again after being knocked
down, time and time again. Yet, sometimes
we have to figure out what is knocking us
down and avoid it.
Publisher / Editor
REGRETS
By Aaron R. Fodiman
No, that is not me, it is Jimmy Stewart when he starred in the movie
It’s a Wonderful Life that inspired these thoughts.