Is regret ever a good thing?

Now I'm sure all of us have at least one moment or specific act in our past that makes us shivver when we relive it in our heads. It may be something you said or did, or didn't say or didn't do that just makes our heart sink. It may have been a moment that lead to intense pain or the slightly lesser feeling of embarassment. Whatever it is, it sets itself up as an ugly pothole in the otherwise smooth and pleasant road that is our past and in our memories. While undoubtedly uncomfortable, are these moments ever a good thing?

I'm a big one for living in the present, trying to take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way and not letting time slip away. My biggest fear in life is unfulfilled potential. You need to look forward at the same time otherwise all your actions and energy will be spent on short term gratification. Of course, short term fun should be something you focus on, but budget your energy at least 70% towards the future and enjoy the fruits of your labour along the way.

The past is gone, but it grows every single second of every single day and eats into the present and future relentlessly. As it does, it becomes fixed and immutable. It solidifies and becomes like granite in our minds. The future is fluid and maleable, think about how many times your future has changed in your own mind. When I was a child I went through periods of wanting to be an actor, a doctor, a lawyer, an astronaut, a soldier and many many more. In a way my possible future changed every single time I focused my energy entertaining anyone of those possible futures.

The past while fixed and unyielding does gift us some of the most invaluable things in existence though. Experience. Teachings. Strength.

Every single moment we are alive we are learning more. We get more experience on every little thing. The more experience we have, the easier things become doing the same thing over and over.

Importantly, when we fail or make a mistake, we learn (at least that is the goal).

Whatever the situation, you have knowledge that you didn't have before. At the very least you know that doing x will produce y result. You know this because it happened. Now, the point I want to get across is that there are two ways you can then deal with this information.

The first way is to take that information as a given, but then lock it away in the filing cabinet of our mind. Ideally in that dusty section at the back because even thinking about that time I had my pants pulled down by my "friends" in front of a group of girls just fills me right to the brim with good old British embarassment.

The second way is to get a team of mental analysts together in your mind and debrief what happened and learn from it. Using the example above, you might think that is just a clear cut but clearly small (not in that way) experience that is irrelevant. To a large extent of course it is. However, it also taught me that nothing really happened as a result. Sure, some people laughed...then nothing. Life moved on, as it does relentlessly without any hint of slowing down.

The situation above was something that I didn't do but was done to me so the learning opportunity is small, but nevertheless I learned that embarassment does not kill you, it doesn't even really hurt you, at least not long term. In fact, quite the opposite happens. If you learn to ride that initial wave of embarassment you callous yourself. You grow stronger as a result and your tolerance for embarrasment increases.

Now, when the memory or incident in question is something that you yourself said or did then you need to view it as an opportunity to learn. The first time you did something you can excuse yourself because you may not have known what the result would be before you did it. You rolled the dice and it didn't work. The next time around, you have no excuse.

I'll give you an example.

I am someone who has a somewhat dark sense of humour and love nothing more than taking the mick out of people and likewise appreciate it being done back to me. That's just the British way. Sometimes as is natural, once you say a few jokes or a few comments, the imaginary line of what is acceptable seems to get further and further away as the recipient seems to respond well. If you keep pushing the limits of what you say (as I tend to do) then you are on a collision course for correction as you will inevitably say the wrong thing because everyone has a limit.

I won't divulge the specifics of what was said but I remember an incident with my ex. Now usually she had a great sense of humour and would take a joke really well, particularly if she was in a good mood which was most of the time. However, as all men know, there are times when our partners are quite clearly not in the mood for such shenanigans. Unfortunately sometimes we are totally oblivious to those signs until we are sifting through the debris afterwards.

We were out for dinner and my ex was clearly not in a good mood, and me being myself was trying to lighten the mood. She was not responding well, but not necessarily horrendously either. I was getting a slight grin as opposed to the usual chuckle. Most sane people would just give up and go tonights not the night. Give up and call it a night. However, I decided to double down and essentially said something along the lines of "cheer up".

Now in retrospect, telling an angry or upset person to "cheer up" is about as useful as trying to put out a fire with a galon of petrol. That was pretty much the reaction I got too.

What erupted over the next 30 seconds or so was etched into my head as she explained how annoying and insensitive I was being, which of course I was. The dust settled not long after, I apologised of course and the night after that was a fairly tame affair.

Now when I think back to the moment I cringe with embarrassment. I felt like a schoolboy being told off by the headmaster, as all the other students watch (as you can imagine the rest of the restaurant was watching). It would be very easy for me to put that memory to the back of my head. However, there is a clear lesson to be learned to make sure the same mistake is not repeated.

Following that specific event I learned to be more sensitive to the situation in front of me and know not to just relentlessly try to cheer someone up, sometimes it's better just to let the person go through what they are going through and allow them to heal at their own pace and not just mine. Now, I didn't necessarily have that revelation due to this one moment but it certainly joined the evidence packet of other such incidents to support that conclusion.

The point is that you will not learn unless you fail or make mistakes. Life is roughly 80 years (differs from person to person) of trial and error. When you error, that doesn't mean you don't try again. Not trying again is the path of least resistance but it is a guaranteed path to failure in life.

Again, to put this in the context of relationships. Pretty much everyone has a bad breakup at some point in their life. It may be because of something you did, they did or it just wasn't to be but either way the experience of breaking up can be a very traumatic one. I know when I broke up with that same ex it hit me really hard. It wasn't necessarily because the relationship should have kept going, because it had clearly run it's course. However, it was a blow because it felt like the future I had planned in my head was ripped away suddenly and brutally.

Again, the weak option is to acknowledge that pain and never look for a relationship again. (Now I'll caveat this slightly and say that I do understand that relationships may not be for everyone and it's perfectly valid not to want a relationship particularly at certain points in your life. I am talking about those that know that they do want a long term partner at some point in their life.) Now there isn't a timeframe on this because there is legitimately a period of time where people need to get over the pain, regret and sometimes embarrassment of a breakup. You need to dive into that pain and learn from the experience. I certainly did and now it gives me a much better chance of actually finding a better partner.

I learned more about what I like in a partner and what I don't. I learned that when things are going south and there are particular red flags, then there is no correcting from that collision course and I should've ended it months earlier. I won't make the same mistake again.

My point throughout all of this is that pain, regret, shame and embarassment are not nice and I am not pretending that they are not uncomfortable. Of course they are. The point is though, somewhere in all that **** is a positive pearl of wisdom that you can pry out to make you a better person and ultimately get better results in the future. When things go wrong, never stop trying or putting yourself out there. Learn from the event, don't repeat the same mistake as before and you will succeed in your social, work and love life.