Regret as a Youth
I believe that one should not regret the past for any amount of time longer than is needed to keep from making the same mistake. We shouldn’t regret any mistakes we make, just try to figure out how to keep it from happening again. If people regret the past they will only see more mistakes in their future, and if the future appears bleak and devastating, then they might lose the will to live. That could make the people around them worry, or worse, they could drag others into that same state of depression with them.
An example of this is when my friend’s girlfriend broke up with him after 3 years and it broke his heart. For the next year or so he moped around and just being around him made other people depressed. He wanted to die for a while because all he did was dwell on his experience.
As we walked home from school one day, we noticed that two people were getting angry and then the male that was there attacked the female. He started beating her and before we could call the cops, she was dead. That changed his perspective on life from then on. He now thinks that something like your girlfriend breaking up with you seems bad at first, but it’s not as bad as some things. Look at what happens around you and watch for the people that are in worse situations than you. Try and help them instead of wishing that the “terrible” event hadn’t happened to you.
That shows why I believe that if you regret the past then you will never know what could happen to you in the future. If you look around you, you will see people who have it thousands of times worse than you do. Don’t regret the past, look to the future and try not to make the same mistakes twice.
If everyone in the world dwelled on the bad things that happened to them in the past, then the world would become a very bleak and desolate place. One person’s sadness would add to that of the others around them, then mankind would become suicidal and an empire of the past. Death will come to those who dwell. That is my motto nowadays because of my friends and what they used to think at times. It means, if you dwell on the past, you might just die before you know what you might have been able to do or the people whose lives you could have saved. It means, you might die without noticing that the world was changing around you or the impact your depression could have on your friends and family. So I’ll say it again, Death will come to those who dwell.