Refuse to Regret

If you're like me, you get most of your life advice and personal affirmations from myspace. There's no end to the whimsical quotes and passages that you can have posted on your page to give it that unique touch. Yes, we know you like to drink--heavily--but what exactly do you like to drink? Only by posting an animated .gif depicting a sparkling bottle of Hennessey can we really know that.


There's one I've noticed that's been popping up more and more:





I guess as the First Internet Generation starts pulling into the train terminal known as age thirty, they're starting to review their lives with a more critical eye. "Perhaps I shouldn't have chosen my college classes based around the time of day they began," or "Maybe it wasn't such a smart idea to spend all of my dispensable income on weed and bootleg porno movies." I know there are plenty of people out there with tattoos they no longer identify with. Turns out the Insane Clown Posse seems a lot less insane once you turn twenty-three.


What's so unnerving about the .jpeg contention above--besides how desperate it sounds--is that it is actually terrible advice. We make mistakes in life, and we can reflect on them and regret those decisions. The trick is not to dwell on this regret and let it keep you from making future mistakes. Blithely asserting that you have (il)logically denounced regret doesn't absolve you from the emotion, and the way some of you thirty-something-or-others are carrying on, you could use a little hindsight. Imagine you could travel back in time and meet yourself at age sixteen. How would you react? What would you say? I'd probably tell myself to invest heavily in Microsoft and hop back in my Delorean.