thePlayland

regret

I just watched Magnolia recently. It had been quite some time since I had seen it. This is mostly due to the quantity of times I had seen it in the past. There was a time when I would watch all 3 hours of that movie a couple of times a month. It’s the kind of film that has to be seen a lot to fully understand all the details. Something that has kept me wanting to see it is that each and every time I watch it, I learn something new. This time, I listened very close to the lines that the characters spoke. Most impactful was the performance by Jason Robards as Earl Partridge. Something he said kicked open a new door for me.

See, for a long time now, I have been of the opinion that I try my best to live my life without any regret at all. I was wrong. Earl Partridge says, “Regret what you fucking want. Use that, use that regret.” It now occurs to me that I have been lying to myself when I say I have no regret. I have plenty of it. More than enough to go around. The difference in me now is that I will begin anew, I will use all the regret that I have and I will be stronger for having done so.

Regret is a bitch because it’s the knowledge that you did something in your past that you would not do had you been given the choice now. It’s knowing that you could have made a better decision and possibly had a better outcome. I have regrets about people, relationships, jobs, burning man. Now, instead of dwelling on those regrets, I will embrace them. I will use them to my benefit and never, ever make the same mistakes again.

I urge you to do the same. Think about all the things you regret in life. Think about all the things you would have done differently. Think about all of them in this new light and use them. That’s what I’m going to do, anyway. Let’s see if it works.