Regretfully Yours

Regret: Sorrow or remorse over something that has happened, especially over something that one has done or left undone.


The Seven Deadly Sins. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Venial sins and mortal sins. We sure have a lot of lists of things that we can do wrong and get punished for. Has anyone ever put together a list of good stuff? Seriously, I'm not aware of anything. There must be people who sit around all day and come up with things that you can get punished for. Do we really need these lists? Do I really need someone to tell me I acted like an ass and then give it a ranking? Man, you were a total ass last night.

I can't even imagine what we would call all of the nice things. The Four Ponys of the Have a Nice Day in the Park? What is the opposite of sin? Maybe we should build a place that you would have to go if you did something nice. "I'm sorry, sir, but you were observed petting a puppy. You're going to have to come with us. That's a class 4 felony in the state of Ohio."

I wonder how many hours in my life I've wasted considering what could have been. I'm not a productive person when I'm wallowing in my own guilt. And it's becoming easier to do as I get older. "If only I'd . . . ." Then when I get tired of making myself feel miserable with this hobby, I drift into the "why did I do what I did" line of reasoning. I also take a perverse pleasure in this. Regret is like sitting in a cold drizzle without a raincoat. It's not going to kill you but it's not pleasant, either. It's a toothache. It's underwear that are too tight. You can get around but you can always feel that waistband digging into your soft, white belly flesh.

The Steps really try to get us to bite off manageable pieces of life. We do things, make some mistakes, then try to right our wrongs. After that, we're instructed to move on. Buckeye Mark says that if his wife tries to dredge up old behavior that he has apologized for, he doesn't take the bait. We don't have to keep making amends.

I think I need to figure out what the Seven Undeadly Anti-Sins would be. I bet they wouldn't be too manly.