By Kennedy, 17, junior
People shouldn’t live life with regrets. That sounds so cliché, I know, but it’s true. Living with regrets can just make your life miserable, especially when you’re someone like me. If you over think everything, if you’re constantly analyzing, re-evaluating and feeling guilty, regrets can be your worst nightmare. They hang off the edge of your bed, they dangle on every bite of your peanut butter sandwich, and they clutter every thought you have on a constant basis.
Regrets can be simple like, “I really shouldn’t have had that pudding.” Maybe they’re a little bit bigger like, “I really shouldn’t have tattooed his name on my neck” or “Why am I in HL Biology?” Maybe they’re more personal and internalized like, “I really shouldn’t have done that.”
Sure, life will give you moments when you can’t believe you did that, but it is my belief that life gives you those lemons to make something out of them. Maybe it’s to make a great summer beverage or maybe the lemon is meant to smack yourself with later.
Nevertheless, life is going to give you obstacles. That’s just part of it. Instead of dwelling on them and making them into periods of regret and remorse, people ought to make these “mistakes” into the ABC’s of life.
Life is filled with screw-ups, mistakes, and trials and errors, but you just find a way to get through them and get over them. Maybe you’ll laugh later when you realize that you cut your sister’s hair when it started growing (yes, I did this). Or maybe you’ll learn not to do it again. Or maybe you’ll do both.
Life is complicated. There’s no doubt about that. Why make it into a burden filled with regret? Being a miserable and regretful individual is no way to live. It’s better to turn things into a learning experience. To be happy, being optimistic is important. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be a perfect person or that you won’t make mistakes. It means that you will try to overcome them and learn from them rather than dwell on them and hate yourself for it.
So with that, go dance like Zorba or search for independence like Janie. They had pretty bleak pasts filled with mistakes, but they learned from them. Don’t regret your past, and don’t forget your mistakes because that’s how you grow into a better person.
Regrets in my book (and Zorba’s) are nonexistent.