I recommend reading Self Reliance if you haven’t already, or refreshing yourself on it if you have. Essentially, trust yourself, think for yourself, take responsibility for yourself. It’s much more of course.
But one of the interesting lines is: “Another form of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance. Regret calamities if you can somehow help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins to be repaired.”
The only problem I ever had on WordPress, of all the political opinions and other thoughts I’ve had, was when I tried to explain to this blogger I followed (I’d been listening to her say how evil she was for over two years) was that wallowing in regret was to be twice guilty. It was a form of self-absorption. Because of course she WAS NOT evil. Which I said I believed. (The things she was evil about was leading a guy on, I think, a couple other things slightly worse). She’d made a few mistakes as everyone has. But all this wallowing in self-recrimination was keeping her from moving on and doing the good things we are all capable of doing.
She went absolutely nuts and so did her followers.
I also expressed to her that this was very difficult at times. But it’s true. If you can FIX it, FIX it. If you can’t, your actions from henceforth are a prayer to God–and of course you’ll likely make another mistake or two, hopefully not the same ones.
I follow another blogger on here whose over-riding theme is this one. How often she writes about it saying just what I’m saying here is possibly trying to get this across to folks–or possibly reveals she hasn’t been as successful at it as she’d like. And needs to remind herself often.
Because it’s HARD.
So if you can fix it, do. If you can’t fix it, stop being stuck in that moment forever because it’s just more excuses for not finally moving forward. There’s this theme in The Legend of Baggar Vance (a movie that got ridiculously bad reviews. Golf movies are some of the best movies because in golf it is just you and the ball and the “field.”: And Baggar finally seems to get through to Matt Damon in the movie that it was time to put that burden down (he’d been a poor leader in the war and gotten his whole company killed because of it). Matt’s character says “I can’t, it’s so long ago,” and a couple times in the movie, Baggar and Adele say, “no, it was a moment ago.”
We are prisoners of our own minds.
This blogger that came unglued and nearly threatened to kill me, was enjoying flogging herself. Enjoying it to much that my suggestion threatened her very existence. As if THAT made her clean again–how long and how much she flagellates herself, in one lifetime.
That is a waste of time and more self-absorption.
Of course, it’s incredible that someone could be that angry about being told they were NOT evil. But that seemed to make her the maddest. I finally had to block her and her followers who called me names I had never even heard of before. She had her whole being wrapped around that idea and I appeared unsympathetic. Mind you, I’d listened to this for two years and tried to help more subtly. She had not changed a bit in two years.
Of course, the reason I knew about this is because I’ve lived a lot longer than she has and I’ve done enough of it myself. I wasn’t as invested that I was evil through and through, so I was able to make strides. And I think some of the things I’ve done, looking back, were truly evil. Like having an abortion (way back when I was given no information about fetal development despite going to a shrink), which is why now I worry about women having to live with what I do. In today’s politics that makes me a hypocrite. I had an abortion at 12 weeks and since having seen how developed that baby was, it nearly killed me. First, I don’t want someone else to go through this; and second, anything past a first trimester is sheer barbarism. Life of the mother comes first and there are enough exceptions like failed birth control for physically fragile mothers that makes me reluctantly want it left legal until fetal heartbeat.
But hand out birth control and stop committing this kind of atrocity when we have ways to deal with this that are safer and cheaper.
It’s hard for me to let that go. Yet I believe what I am saying here is true. I can’t fix it–I can only move forward and try to make a difference.
As Emerson says, prayer and spirituality do not exist in church or not necessarily so; your very acts are prayer (or the reverse) so be careful what you do.
And stop being stuck in a moment.
L.E.K. 
I agree that sometimes getting hung up on regrets can take you down from the inside. I was the person who thought about something I did or said that was embarrassing years and years later – I’d obsess about it. As I’ve had children and gotten into my 40s I see now how I have to let things go. In fact, I try not to even live with regrets, hard as it may be.
While I did not have an abortion myself, I did once take Plan B when I thought contraception may have failed and I felt so bad about that, even. These things can (mostly) be prevented and I think people who claim that third trimester abortions’ are “healthcare rights” or whatever are just too lazy to make good decisions on the front end.
Yeah, it was hard to live with and I had no information back then. So, it’s hard to say if Walker is a hypocrite or not. Maybe if his common law wife WANTED the abortion, her choice, and he paid, that’s one thing. He’s going to vote to rein it in and obviously the left is out of control on no restrictions. So why vote for Warnock. No brainer to vote for Herschel. They love to play on our ethics when they have none. But wallowing in regret and eternal self-recrimination is a form of self-absorption. Move on and do some good things. That’s all we can do. But no reason this needs to be legal past 12 weeks OUTSIDE. 🙂