A Wishing Well For Sad Regrets
I came across a website today that's full of regrets. Random, heartfelt, painful, compelling, angry, resentful, sad, mournful regrets. The beauty of such a site is it gives people a place to anonymously deposit these burdensome, heavy loads of baggage in a safe place.
The story I stumbled on details how the creator of the site, SecretRegrets.com, took these regrets posted by unnamed writers and created a best-selling book. The concept is brilliant really. Like a priest's confessional chamber, the regretee can leave their life's worst moments in pixelated form, in a cathartic release of whatever plagues them.
I left a regret, but I have many, many more I could have shared. Who doesn't? I did find some recurring themes played out in the hundreds of regrets I read through (and that was just today's regrets). Many people regretted getting married to someone they despised, some regretted letting that one love get away, some regretted cheating on a spouse, some regretted having abortions, some regretted neglected their children, some regretted keeping a rape secret, some regretted doing awful things to another. There were regrets over wasted potential, ignoring dying loved ones, being hurtful to someone who then killed themselves, being a bad child, a bad parent, a bad daughter, son. You get the point...regrets are NOT a fun thing.
As long as we are human, we will have regrets. We try, we fail, we make mistakes, we are hateful, cruel, stupid, scared and above all imperfect. Perhaps one good thing that can be gained from leaving your regrets in an anonymous regret warehouse is knowing you aren't the only one with regrets, you aren't the only in pain, you aren't the only one harboring a painful secret — and you might discover some regrets are far worse than your own. There is safety in numbers. For me, the best thing was finally deciding to fix what would surely have become a future regret.
And one less regret to lament over is a blessed thing.
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