Of Regret

To err is human; to forgive divine. But certainly no one expects errors; and if he has made any, he usually regrets, and the more he cherishes it, the more he will suffer. As a small leak sinks a great ship, the collapse of a great enterprise is sufficient for a life-long misery. His heart breaks not for the destruction of a feat, but for the subtlety of a single and inconspicuous choice, thereafter he can rarely tread the other way. Frost said it well in his The Road not Taken:

I shall be telling this with a sigh,

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Truly the losses are great; but the possible gains, or opportunity costs, even loom greater in his mind, haunt and add to his anguish, just as the good old days always seem better than they were, especially when remembered in reversals.

It has also been frequently observed that he cherishes it most when it is lost. Meanwhile in his Julius Caesar Shakespeare wrote:

The evil that men do lives after him;

The good is often interred with their bones.

which seemingly goes contrary to the conclusion mentioned above it. But that is just humanity: memory often prefers losses rather than gains. The danger past and God forgotten. This sense of loss can be intensified by recent achievements in other fields, as it even dwarfs the imperfect part, and consequently the bitter is even bitter, while the sweet is less sweet. There is nevertheless an exception: the losses present are always good reminders of gains past. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at the falling of the dusk. When he is undergoing it he certainly expects a happy ending; but when it is ended, whether it is a happy one or not, he cannot have more than hindsight. Defeats can be repeated, while victories can never be copied.

It is really interesting to note that there are certainly some that are best when memorised, and some other that only memorise the best. As for the former, they are roses with sweet smells and hidden pricks. Though never a rose is without the prick, they either have too many, or too sharp; yet they are truly too sweet to decline, as mysterious as Sphinx, and as luring as sirens. They are certainly perfect causes for regrets; whether he touches it or not, he will regret. And for the latter, they are the repentant most often seen. Some of them are idealists, with no tolerance of this imperfect world, and demands every joy past; the rest are victims of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and frequently reminded of the good old days. As perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures, he that is underpaid inevitably has grievances against the present, and day and night he broods over a multitude of possibilities that are lost.

But mere regrets are no repentance. As Hemingway said, to regret to the point of not repeating them is true repentance. There are too many who stumble twice over the same stone. But it is no easy task to prevent future repetition; for though the error is committed by hand, the seed of a sin is deep in the soul; as mentioned above, to err is human. Hence he makes mistakes as long as he is human, and all of them are new; he needs deep insight to see the truth, good memory to remember it, and moreover tireless feet to constantly tread new fields.