“What’s the best thing to do with old regrets?”
“Well I think most people try to save them… then they can take them out now and then and look at them”
“Do you save all of your old regrets, Charlie Brown?”
“Oh yes, I have an award winning collection”
This is how the cartoon strip of Peanuts goes in yesterday’s paper. These strips at one point of time when I was young gave me immense pleasure, but now when I have grown older, I feel they make more sense to me than ever. Somehow, I feel that Charles Schultz would have been a profound thinker, but used a medium which is so very friendly to tell what he wanted, or rather what he wanted others to ponder. This was one such piece.
Old regrets never get washed away. They stay permanently in your mind. Maybe because you grow wiser and you now believe that you could have handled a situation that caused you regret much better than what you did then. But situations as the word by itself will endorse, is more about that point of time and never before or after. If you had been wiser 'then' is a question that is never possible. Then the regret itself would not have happened in the first place. You were wise and you handled it well. These situations I talk about could be a few hours earlier even. Not that we grow extremely wise in the space of few hours. Just that the experience teaches you. Or the fallibility teaches you. But you need to make the mistake on first place.
I am Charlie Brown that way. Quite an award winning collection I do have. But I don’t know whether I take it out now & then and feel bad about it. Rarely I do. But when it comes it does rankle in my mind for a while. I keep thinking ‘if only’. But I am a strong opponent of ‘If’ and ‘If only’. One of my old bosses used to say, ‘If only my aunt had balls she would have been my uncle’ to make us understand the futility of ‘If only’. The aunt will never grow them and she will never become an uncle. So certain stuff do not have ‘if’ suitable for them.
Then why regret? Maybe because we always want to be right! And do not want to even recollecting the naivety we had at one point of time. For me, it starts from asking for potato chips in a relative’s place when I was a kid. And these guys were nouveau riche. They shooed me away. One of my sisters saw it. And all my sisters vowed not to go back to their place for treating me that way. My regret was about not getting the chips though. Later when I grew older, and they weren’t that rich and I had to be a mentor to one of the boys in their home, and I believed that one of the girls at their home was beautiful and she became my friend, I had this secret pride of having got back at them. The chips were forgotten.
But for Peanuts, I would not have recognized that my award winning collection does not have ‘being shooed away when I wanted chips’ as a regret. Well, there are still many like that. Mostly the ones I feel I could have handled them better while I was still wise enough to do.
We all do… But, these are in a way, pretty good, isn’t it? Since they became a regret they prove one point atleast. Now you are wiser!!!!
“Well I think most people try to save them… then they can take them out now and then and look at them”
“Do you save all of your old regrets, Charlie Brown?”
“Oh yes, I have an award winning collection”
This is how the cartoon strip of Peanuts goes in yesterday’s paper. These strips at one point of time when I was young gave me immense pleasure, but now when I have grown older, I feel they make more sense to me than ever. Somehow, I feel that Charles Schultz would have been a profound thinker, but used a medium which is so very friendly to tell what he wanted, or rather what he wanted others to ponder. This was one such piece.
Old regrets never get washed away. They stay permanently in your mind. Maybe because you grow wiser and you now believe that you could have handled a situation that caused you regret much better than what you did then. But situations as the word by itself will endorse, is more about that point of time and never before or after. If you had been wiser 'then' is a question that is never possible. Then the regret itself would not have happened in the first place. You were wise and you handled it well. These situations I talk about could be a few hours earlier even. Not that we grow extremely wise in the space of few hours. Just that the experience teaches you. Or the fallibility teaches you. But you need to make the mistake on first place.
I am Charlie Brown that way. Quite an award winning collection I do have. But I don’t know whether I take it out now & then and feel bad about it. Rarely I do. But when it comes it does rankle in my mind for a while. I keep thinking ‘if only’. But I am a strong opponent of ‘If’ and ‘If only’. One of my old bosses used to say, ‘If only my aunt had balls she would have been my uncle’ to make us understand the futility of ‘If only’. The aunt will never grow them and she will never become an uncle. So certain stuff do not have ‘if’ suitable for them.
Then why regret? Maybe because we always want to be right! And do not want to even recollecting the naivety we had at one point of time. For me, it starts from asking for potato chips in a relative’s place when I was a kid. And these guys were nouveau riche. They shooed me away. One of my sisters saw it. And all my sisters vowed not to go back to their place for treating me that way. My regret was about not getting the chips though. Later when I grew older, and they weren’t that rich and I had to be a mentor to one of the boys in their home, and I believed that one of the girls at their home was beautiful and she became my friend, I had this secret pride of having got back at them. The chips were forgotten.
But for Peanuts, I would not have recognized that my award winning collection does not have ‘being shooed away when I wanted chips’ as a regret. Well, there are still many like that. Mostly the ones I feel I could have handled them better while I was still wise enough to do.
We all do… But, these are in a way, pretty good, isn’t it? Since they became a regret they prove one point atleast. Now you are wiser!!!!
1 comment:
Peanuts and Calvin & hobbes,,,seemingly childish scrawling..but so profound
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