CORRECTIONS

This is my favourite part of every update. Ha! I’m not sure why anyone would get upset with what I write. Honestly, in questions of right or wrong, most of what I write is wrong and just ruminations. In questions that are a matter of opinion, I hold a minority opinion at best, so no worries. Also if a remark resembles you, remember that I deal and interact with a whole host of people. It probably is not you especially if you are receiving or reading this.

That said, I was told that I angered someone with my comments on regret before. Let me say, that in my (biased) experience, it is still true that 99.9% of people justify past mistakes because of the present. It’s strange to me because it’s arbitrary. No matter who you dated, no matter what school you attended or didn’t attend, no matter what job you refused, you will say “I wouldn’t change a thing” or “it was worth it all.” And definitely, the vast majority of my girl friends has said and will probably say the same thing when they (my friends) wed their husbands especially if they had a chances to be with other people and decided to pursue the husband. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just what people do. In fact, what I’ve learned is that it can be a coping mechanism. Imagine the internal dissonance you experience if you’re with your spouse and you think “I wish I had made it work with the previous person.” Very few do that. Very few can even say “I regret how it went in the past or the decision I made.” I was simply saying I lack the internal or moral dissonance. And to me it says nothing negative about the person to whom I’m married. In the same way, saying “If I could do it over again, I would have not had the teenage pregnancy” does not saying anything bad about the beautiful daughter that I had who has grown up into a beautiful young adult. But for many people it does cause a dissonance. I can only speak for myself.

I, however, understand the need to cope, and I’ve decided I’m going to try saying things like that “I wouldn’t change a thing.” After all, we all need to cope including me. J

My one friend, Maeve (singer and businesswoman extraordinaire) told me that her personal framework is such that she only regrets past decisions if she knowingly chose the wrong thing. So for her, if she made the best decision she could make with all the information she had at the time, then it’s not regrettable. She only regrets when she knowingly makes a bad choice. So everyone has a framework.