Regret doesn't make any sense when you realize there will ALWAYS be
something to regret.
That life is suffering. And that there is no getting around that.
Suffering is the norm here. As soon as you realize this, you get to a
point where you go 'okay, hmmm, I don't have to at least suffer with
the notion that there SHOULDN'T be any suffering'. Cuz that just
compounds it. Makes it worse. Exponentially.
Probably most suffering in the world comes from the mistaken notion
that we "shouldn't" suffer. But then we come to realize that NOBODY
gets away from it here. I don't care if you're a Rockerfeller or a
Brad Pitt, or a Rothschild, or a member of the Wal-Mart family, or the
world's most successful uncaught serial killer, or the President of
the United States, or Bill Gates or the latest winner of the lottery.
Everyone must suffer here. It literally comes with the territory. If
there's anything that we all have in common here, it's that.
You know? Cuz one could say "Oh, I suffer because my son was killed by
an axe murderer" or "Oh, I suffer because I have this particular
illness or condition" or "Oh I suffer because my mom beat me up when I
was a kid" or "Oh I suffer because my father was killed in the war and
I never knew him".
But the common misperception is that IF these "terrible" things
WEREN'T true, then....
What? Everything would be okay? You would have lived happily ever
after? With no problems? Living in a dreamlike state of peace forever?
With peaches and ice cream and turtle doves for the rest of eternity?
No... see take this latter thing for example... "My dad was killed in
the war". Well, a lot of people, a lot of kids are facing that one.
The effects of war definitely filtered down on me too. My dad was in
the war, was in a couple wars, and they had a traumatic effect on him,
and those effects had an effect on me. And I have felt a lot of pain
from those effects. They've fucked me up. My mom had a run-in with bad
psychiatry. In 1961. It traumatized her. That trauma filtered down to
me too. Okay.
I realize that I could spend the rest of my life completely bitter and
angry and regretful about war and psychiatry.
Doesn't really change those institutions.
What it does is put my emotional state as contingent on forces outside
myself, forces in the past, forces that I have no power over.
Nigger, it doesn't mean that if there were no war, or your dad wasn't
in it, that there wouldn't be something else majorly fucking up your
shit!
EVERYONE gets their shit fucked with in one way or another here!
EVERYONE! It's the price we pay for being alive! No one gets out of
here without getting their tit caught in the ringer. No one! Look
around! There's enough pain to go around for everyone here! And joy,
and laughter and comfort and everything else!
It's just life!
I mean Roger Waters of Pink Floyd is a great artist, no doubt. He has
kind of used as an emotional well to draw from, in a lot of his music,
the fact that his dad, "unfortunately" was killed in WWII. This has,
arguably, led to a lot of great art. I put quotes around the
"unfortunately" because I can only imagine that if it WEREN'T true,
Roger, no doubt, imagines having a WONDERFUL father, leading a
WONDERFUL life, having a happy childhood, and his dad would have taken
him out for peaches and ice cream and fishing every Sunday and his
life would have been great. Or (not to be flippant about it) at least
a lot better life right?
So... "regret" comes from that perception. Anger. Pain. Bitterness.
And.. also the double rock opera THE WALL. Which has arguably led to
.... more suffering in people.
But Roger doesn't KNOW that's the case. It's a fantasy.
Who's to say Roger Waters' father, if he had stayed home from the war,
wouldn't have been a completely brutal and obnoxious asshole? As dads,
let's face it, tend to be? He might have abused little Roger. Maybe
buggered the poor little chap. He might have been an alcoholic, racked
with guilt that he didn't do his part in the war, or shell-shocked
from having survived it, and took it out on his family. All sorts of
things.
I think it was Sartre or Freud that said, "the best thing a father can
do for his son is to die early". It's kind of true. Fathers are full
of shit at least half the time because they want to take credit when
you do well, but they don't want to take the blame, at all, if you do
bad. Most of them don't REALLY want sons in the first place. Also,
they tend to put you in a double-bind by INSISTING that you excel but
also 'keeping you in your place', especially if you're a male, so as
not to surpass them.
George Carlin said that all the world's ills can be traced back to
what fathers do to their sons.
So I don't know, I wonder if Roger ever considered maybe it was...
kind of a blessing in disguise that his dad was killed in the war.
Instead of regretting it.
The guy could have been a total dick.
I mean, the point is just think about this everytime you look back on
some aspect of your life with regret. This notion that something needs
change. Or 'shouldn't' have happened. More damage and mental suffering
has been caused by the words 'if' and 'should' than probably any other
words in the English language. We don't know things would have been
better. We do know that there's no life without suffering. And that
there's no saying things would have been worse the way YOU wanted
them, or envisioned them. Or wouldn't have been at least as bad.
Because no matter what would have happened, you always would have to
face challenge, suffering, the unknown, pain, hassles, etc.
"IF only it weren't for that happening...." we say, and then we
realize "it would have been something else".
The only greatness in life comes from, perhaps, a happy attitude (some
might say a 'slackful' attitude) in the midst of all the suffering.
And that happy attitude is I think to a large degree due to a
realization that nothing needs change that we cannot change. There's
nothing you can do that can't be done. That regret is unnecessary.
That life entails suffering NO MATTER WHAT. No matter how you envision
it need be or should have been. And that there's nothing to disprove
the notion that this isn't the best of all possible worlds. Yeah there
is suffering, and tears, and pain and war and all that. But that's
what we signed up for.
If there's a name to this game it is 'Suffering'. Right there
emblazoned on the box it came out of.
I can only imagine it was so boring in 'Kansas' that at some point we
sang 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' and came here.
Well, you get what you pay for, Dorothy.
Just... surrender.
Phin
http://www.nationalcynical.com
On Regret 
Linear Mode
