I would not do anything over.
I have long held that all of our experiences, good and bad, help to shape us into who we are. I like who I am. To change anything would be to deny my identity; to deny the self that I have become through the years. This is not to say that I have a desire to freeze life where it is right now. I will change and morph in the future, the same as I have for the past 26 years. Life is a constant flux. Without every joy and pain, who is to say who I would be? To wish for a do-over in anything is to give into regret. Regret is a scary thing to me - a thing that would eat away at the core of my identity.
We can catch only glimmers, through introspection, of what we take away from our experiences. There are memories that I am sure are major factors in who I am and memories I have forgotten. (Are these memories then? That's another debate.) One's identity is a complex thing, difficult to summarize and difficult to ever fully know. These forgotten memories, I'm sure, have been just as large of factors in my forging as the ones I reflect upon. Again, we can never be entirely certain of how things have affected us.
So while I may edit my writings and reload a videogame save, I would never re-do anything in my life. What is the point if this is not all some enormous learning experience?
1 comment:
Well, with that logic you could say that regret is just another experience... :p
I don't think regret is something that eats away at someone's identity, rather it's a level of suffering that may or may not influence future actions. If a memory is regrettable, then that piece will forever be changed from its initial installment into memory. It is a conscious and willful memory manipulator as opposed to subconscious dreams. One's memories are never detailed and exact, not even ones with photographic memory, so why would regret make up less of an identity? We usually shape the world to our views, not the other way around.
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