RE: My take on regret
October 18, 2017 at 12:21 pm
(This post was last modified: October 18, 2017 at 1:18 pm by Whateverist.)
Regret may be unavoidable but the way you hold it can vary a lot. Some regrets you can't help but realize are silly. Flying home from a wonderful vacation can be regretted. But you realize the only way to avoid that regret is to have no vacations or else the kind you wished would end sooner, not an attractive alternative. Or you ordered the rocky road ice cream cone and now your wife's selection of mango looks even better. Unless you're willing to wind up looking like the governor of New Jersey, you don't go back and also have the mango or any of the other attractive alternatives. Plenty of choices are like that.
In my hobby of making a garden there are a ton of choices, and I am quite the collector of plants. But I wouldn't want all the plants I admire crammed into the limited canvas of my plot. It is more important to make aesthetic choices than to be a glutton about it. In the end it is the pleasure of being in the space and serving the muse that counts. Like a garden our lives are impermanent. The joy of creating either one should trump the regret of finitude or the regret at not being able to have it all.
In my hobby of making a garden there are a ton of choices, and I am quite the collector of plants. But I wouldn't want all the plants I admire crammed into the limited canvas of my plot. It is more important to make aesthetic choices than to be a glutton about it. In the end it is the pleasure of being in the space and serving the muse that counts. Like a garden our lives are impermanent. The joy of creating either one should trump the regret of finitude or the regret at not being able to have it all.
