I heard an old adage a week or so ago and have been thinking about it ever since. It is the idea that the price of discipline is far lower than the cost of regret. I guess another way to put it might be “handle your business today so you don’t have to clean up the mess tomorrow.” As such sayings go, the lesson is simple and arguably universally true.
How many things in our life can we look back upon and wish we had done better? How many situations have we found ourselves in where our desire for immediate gratification has overcome our concern about the future and the long term costs of what we want right now? Who among us has not heard the little voice in our head telling us that we are going to regret the course of conduct we are on at that time and do it anyway?
On the other hand, how often have we found ourselves going to the mailbox of life only to find a statement there demanding immediate payment for the lack of discipline that we had long forgot about? It is no different than owing a credit card debt for a trip taken several years ago. In retrospect, the trip may not have been worth the ultimate price you will pay for it and more importantly, even if it was worth it, you might not remember it that way.
While burdensome debt is an easy and obvious example of a source of regret, the list of possible sources is endless and limited only by the person's ability to regret the past.
Relationships, business deals, telling a lie, ignoring or mistreating children, lost tempers, failure to pay attention, eating too much, forgetting where you put something, not paying attention to the road ahead, a cross word, missing class, ignoring a loved one, failing to tell someone you love them – the list goes on and on. The discipline to live your life prudently with an eye on the ramifications of your conduct can help make your trip through life a little smoother and presumably happier.
Does that mean that regret is a good thing in the sense that it will make us act better now so we don’t suffer later? In some respect, I guess that is true. But when you really think about it, what is regret? Regret is nothing more than a memory of a course of conduct you took in your life that you wish you would have done differently. In other words, regret is nothing more than a memory and your interpretation of it.
Do you have the discipline to use your memory of a prior course of conduct to go forward with your life and try to improve it based on the lessons learned? Or will you allow your interpretation of the memory to further hamper your journey? Using past mistakes as a guide for future conduct can only help. I think they call that experience. Slogging around in the mud hole of regret will only slow you down and will not fix the past.
Regret is nothing more than a bag of bricks. If you living your life in regret for past deeds, then put the bag down and look to improve the future with the lessons learned. If you're regrets are for a wrong to another, tell them you are sorry. That includes you. Apologizing to ourselves and then forgiving ourselves for mistakes we have made is often the first step to a brighter future.
You can’t change what happened yesterday, but you can improve upon tomorrow by what you do today. That means there is always hope, and that is something that makes everyone’s life better, especially those of us way up in the CHEAP SEATS!
Bill James is an attorney and co founder of the James Law Firm with offices in Little Rock, Conway, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. He practices exclusively in the area of Criminal Defense, He can be contacted at Bill@JamesFirm.com.