Dread and Regret, Two Sides of the Same Coin
I've had enough personal experiences and have been introspective enough about them to be finally piecing together some truisms about our human life and the human condition. Perhaps this introspection comes from having an existential crisis or two, or maybe my 34 years of experience on this planet have provided me with some much appreciated perspective. Either way, I have some pretty well thought-out on two topics at are very near and dear to my heart. Dread and regret.
The first realization that I made about these two emotions is that they are really the same. Regret is taking something bad in the past and bringing it into the here-and-now. Dread, as you can imagine, is the same except that you take it from the future instead of the past. Now, let me ask you this. In both situations, this "something bad" doesn't exist now. It either exists in the past or the future. And somehow, for some reason, you are deciding to experience it now. Why would you ever want to do that?
Now, granted that you can learn from our mistakes and regret can definitely help you out in that situation. Regret allows you to make rules about how your future is going to be, such as: Wow, I really regret doing those two tequila shots at that guy's house the other night, and all the things that followed, so maybe I'll just not do tequila shots with some guy I meet while walking home from a bar at 3 AM.
Similarly, dread allows you to prepare, emotionally or otherwise, for unpleasant things that will happen in the future, such as: ACK! I can't believe I have to give a toast at my brother's wedding in front of all those people; I'm not going to know what to say, so maybe I should start writing a speech or something.
As such, these emotions play essential roles in the functioning of the human psyche.
However, there are times when these emotions have no interest in being productive. They grab you like a hook in your chest and pull you, gasping and bleeding, face to face with your fears. Your heart pounds, your stomach aches, your legs feel weak. These emotions can easily morph into another less friendly or useful emotion: anxiety.
Now, here's what I've learned through all my past experiences. Your here-and-now should only be filled with thoughts relevant to the present or near future. Regret and dread, once you are done making use of the kick-in-the-pants that they provide, once they've supplied you with the motivation they give you to change your future for the better... Once you're done with them, regret and dread need to be dismissed and put away. It might be hard to believe, but I feel that people actually choose to be overwhelmed with regret and dread. They get caught up in it and allow themselves to cycle around and around in the whirlpool of negative emotions. However, as with most things that you choose to allow to continue, you can also choose to end these feelings.
Yes indeed, regret and dread are two sides of a somewhat useful but often destructive coin. When you find that coin in your pocket, deal with it. But then throw it in the fountain and make a wish for a brighter future. Your here-and-now will thank you later.
4 comments:
might i add that facebook photo albums have taken regret to new levels.
it's so hard to throw that coin into the fountain when it's digitally tagged to yr name for internet-ages to come.
I'm gonna try this again, because I didn't write clearly enough:
I like this idea on the surface, and I appreciate the reminder to transcend these roadblocks to happiness, but if you prohibit yourself from feeling regret, you may be shutting off your subconcious and what its trying to tell you. You say here that one should learn the lessons from regret and then bury it, but I'm not convinced it works that way. I think reflecting on regret reveals things that you might be well served to understand (which you mention), and I admit there's a good chance you may be right about cutting it off/prohibiting it from becoming a festering cycle, but is it possible that letting it stick around may be a necessary part of the process of understanding? If you force regret from your thoughts, you may be denying yourself greater understanding that comes over time and mental process. If you force it from your thoughts, it may stick around, popping up in unexpected ways, until you deal with what underlies it.
Dread: I say this often, but I think we downplay that humans are essentially just evolved animals. We have flight or fight responses built in over millenia, and anxiety is one of these automatic responses that are built into our DNA. While I can't say that dread/anxiety is always a useful response to the predators that hunt the modern human animal, simply deciding to not feel dread may be beyond our cognitive ability to completely control.
I don't think its just as easy as letting the feeling go. Regret is a real emotion, and as such is not so easy to just leve behind. I generally try to live my life to minimize regret, so when I do look back and see areas where i wish I had acted differently, its hard not let those emotions bug me for longer than I would like to let them.
I actually prefer dread for that reason. The thing you are dreading will eventually come to pass and give you relief that its nt as bad as you were expecting. Regret, though, affords no such opportunities.
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