Regret-me-not
Do you have regrets? You may think on them, turning them over and over in your mind.
“If only I had done this…” you say.
What resolution will you find by thinking? You think you have done wrong, your actions wrong or not good enough. Judgement is where regret is found, and you keep the pain it causes alive by reminding yourself again and again of your failure, of your less-than-perfect action.
There is no solving it. Maybe it was good this happened, maybe not. Maybe if you had done things differently it would have been better, but maybe not. You cannot know, so why carry around such a burden?
“Ah, but I keep it lest I forget my mistake and make it again,” you say.
Can learning not take place without regret? It is the self-punishment of regret that serves no purpose; realizing we have made a mistake and remembering it so that we learn and do not repeat it is not regret, it is wisdom. We may not even call such a thing a mistake - it is only a relative term.
To live with no regrets is to live in the place where judgement cannot find a foothold, and that place is this moment, here and now. Regrets have no place in the Timeless - they cannot exist without a past and future - and so that place is where we we can find peace. In the words of a bright young sage wannabe (that is, me):
“Regrets are not resolved, they are transcended.”