I don't even like Sinatra, or the song. But when a Facebook (and old school) friend posted a Guardian article about the five top dying regrets, I found myself quoting "My Way." As with many things, it was a serendipitous posting, fitting in with my current thoughts.
Minor Geminid digression:
I once heard that the reason you notice things is because of the filtering part of your brain. (Gotta get something out of those management classes!) Without the filter, you'd go into sensory overload. But, once you've created a pathway, the filter lets things through. Agatha Christie mentions this phenomenon in They Came to Baghdad. It's universal: once something grabs your attention, you see it everywhere.
So, I'm thinking about regrets? Yes. This is not the same as regretting things. It fits into my personal work: I've been going over my assignment from my therapist. What do I want, need, deserve? It is significant, I think, that in my previous post I turned Deserve into Desire. Apparently, I don't want to think about what I deserve. Desire is need, so is want, and I turned the exercise into a puzzle: how do I differentiate? I spun my wheels, trying to fit my list into increasingly abstruse categories. Is healthy food a need or a want? What about love? Clearly a desire....but is it also a need? What about meaningful work? friends? safety?
Here's the list I dictated into the phone while sitting on a bench outside during a long break: food, lodging, meaningful work, safety, security, goals, creativity, love, friends, serenity, connections, music, writing, books, exercise, amusement, sleep, healthy food, wine, sweetness, laughter, joy, fun, a lover, purpose, stability, money, peace, someone to take care of me, strength, competence, self-confidence, time, adventure, activity, health, wisdom.
Then I started spinning my wheels further, analyzing the order in which I thought of things. Does it indicate my priorities? Or something deeper? I observed that I started with the concrete, included a lot of my Shoulds, and smuggled in only a few emotional needs. And that I followed "someone to take care of me" with a bunch of self-sufficient qualities. It's a disjointed, contradictory list.
Even when I'm trying to figure out how I got into this emotional pickle, even when I'm trying to dig my way out, I seem unable to focus on the sweet, joyous things in life: love, friends, happiness. It's no accident that the Declaration of Independence does not talk about basic needs (food, lodging, work). It talks about life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. It does not attempt to define happiness or the way it is pursued. Why can't my own declaration go in that direction?
And this is where regret comes in. There I was, sitting on a bench outside the Balloon Museum, facing my beloved Sandias, watching the play of New Mexican light over the mountain, following the clouds in the endless sky. Why wasn't I walking, taking photos, basking in the beauty around me and rejoicing in the health of my body? Why was I focusing inward instead of outward? Why didn't I do something useful with my life, the little bits and pieces that I have to work with?
The big regret is waste: waste of time, opportunity, talent. And I think the real waste is only slowly coming to me. I am wasting my joy. When something wonderful happens to me, I transmogrify it into a problem. When someone tells me I am loved, I question it. When I try to think of what I deserve, I dodge the question.
Now, this is who I am. I think too much. In the long run, what does that accomplish? What seems like a waste could be seen as the necessary part of the whole, neither good nor bad. The yin and the yang, as it were. However you see it, the waste is inseparable from the procession of events that make up a life. It's a product. And so is regret. It's what thinking humans do. You get a result and you rejoice, but you also regret. So sue me.
After all this musing, I end up with the Declaration of Independence. I have the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Looking to my list, I find that it's easy to categorize from this point. I deserve these rights. I need the basics to use my rights: food and shelter, work and play. I want the things that enhance these needs: security, stability, creativity, meaning//purpose, health, money, amusement, aesthetics, exercise of mind and body. Coming full circle, I deserve the intangibles that inform these wants and needs: love, laughter, joy, friendship. Where does regret fit in? It probably shouldn't come into this at all. But I do regret the time and energy I waste in the pursuit of unhappiness.
However, I don't fucking need, want, or deserve someone to take care of me. Let's make that perfectly clear.
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