You regret nothing?

black and white, art, woman, hands on face

“If you have no sadness or remorse, you are a liar or a denier, or worse still, you haven’t lived.  No one makes it through life without words better left unsaid, poor judgments or thoughtless omissions.  I can barely make it through the day without all three.”

~ Erica Brown (NY Times – A Nice Opportunity for Regret)


Image Source: Tigran

32 thoughts on “You regret nothing?

  1. Regrets — sure we all have regrets. That’s a cliche. Here is what Rumi says about it:

    If God said,

    “Rumi, pay homage to everything
    that has helped you
    enter my
    arms,”

    there would not be one experience of my life,
    not one thought, not one feeling,
    not any act, I
    would not
    bow
    to.

    If you are happy about where your voyage has taken you your regrets can only be conditional. But be careful — if you could change important decisions and events in your life — would the change take you off course?

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  2. Powerful – and freeing. The image syncs perfectly. The duality of her calm gaze and the posture of shame. Great one David (I write that a lot in the comment section of your blog, don’t I).

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  3. This post really got me to pondering. Regret is often a symptom of my bipolar disorder, a form of depression that’s focused and obsessive. I’ve come to recognize it as a marker of my illness, not something to entertain.

    As others have said, human beings make mistakes. We strike out and hurt others. Hopefully, we amends as best we can. We learn and adjust our behavior. To continue to ruminate on our mistakes, to churn out the “what if” scenarios, never helps and keeps us living in the past.

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  4. Never listed any, because there were so many. Regrets for options I didn’t take. Sadness for the huge mistakes. I had remorse, but will pass that phase. regrets are after all in-vain, so lets say Rumi or anyone who had a philosophy knew it well, we can not tell what we went through , for that’s a secret we won’t talk about with you :))

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  5. Uh-huh…yep…wow! Was just in a conversation earlier about regrets – the kind that are not worth it, the little ones that nag at us. But the quote is powerful, and like Mimi said, freeing. Once again, an exquisite pairing of words and art.

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