Regret
Wednesday, 11 October 2006.
I had a friend, growing up in High School.
I suppose, at the time, I'd have hesitated to call her a friend. We smiled, and made jokes, liked poking fun at each other. But we never really got to know each other, and graduated without much of a word and went on to live our lives afterward.
She contacted me a little unsuccessfully thereafter, since I was consumed by my ambition right out of high school (as a digression, it’s interesting how college life has dulled and disillusioned that ambition; not because I believe it to be unobtainable, but because I have come to believe it to be arrogant and empty). Anyway, after that died down and I started to learn to love life, and I contacted her a little unsuccessfully, as she'd gone far away and changed quite a bit.
I suppose people change a lot. In literature, characters are either classed as those that are static (that is, they do not change over the course of the story) or dynamic (that is, they change in some way through a story). I think dynamic people are more common in real life, though it could just be that I see much more youth than age. I'm almost frightened, though, by how much I myself have changed in the last few years. I'm completely different than I was two short years ago; furthermore, I'm almost alien to who I was in four years ago. I suppose most of the changes were for the better, though there are some that I recognize to be for the worse.
Anyway; at the time, I thought nothing of it. People come and go in life. Over a further few years I heard sad echoes and rumors coming from her direction, and I found I was concerned for her; found myself regretting how lightly I'd taken our friendship; found myself wishing I'd done something to push her onto a better track.
But all I have to show for it is regrets. Even when I did nothing wrong, regret rears itself. I was a child, I couldn’t have known how important people really were, or how far-reaching a simple gesture can go. Perhaps even if I had made an effort to befriend her back then, it wouldn’t have mattered. I can’t know.
I find that, over time, I tried to convince myself of several things, to lessen the sting of regret. For example, “I didn’t know any better, so I can’t be held responsible.” “It’s not my life, therefore it’s not my business.” “Things happened as they did, and couldn’t have happened any other way.” However, those, and others, are all merely excuses. They're empty. They don’t solve the problem and only paint over the wood, giving it a pretty face while it continues to rot beneath.
See, I think the only way to undo regret is to make as much effort as you can now, once you've learned better. For example, for me to make the search for my friend, contact her, and see how she is. It’s my burden, of course—my responsibility.
