Community Chat

[occasionalrain]

I would choose to live with guilt rather than regret. 

What would you choose?

[Sooner]

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@occasionalrain wrote:

I would choose to live with guilt rather than regret. 

What would you choose?

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Neither.  Don't live in the past.  If you have guilt, fix it if you can.  If you can't fix it, learn something from it and move on. 

If it is regret, stop living in the past.  Make the best you can of today and tomorrow if you are lucky enough to have one. 

[Marp]

For me it would depend on the situation that would/could cause either.

In general though I think I would choose regret because that would imply it affects only me while having feelings of guilt could involve someone else either directly or indirectly.

[occasionalrain]

Nothing to do with living in the past.

It's about an opportunity to do something you desire that will bring with it guilt. Do you choose to enjoy the opportunity knowing you will experience guilt or do you decline the opportunity to avoid the guilt but regret the lost opportunity?

[chrystaltree]

If I had to choose, it would be regret.  Regret, I can handle.  Guilt eats away at the soul, it's a poison that grows bigger and bigger over time. 

[qualitygal]

Neither one, but regret, would be something I didn't do for myself or someone else. Guilt, having done something wrong, where someone probably would have been hurt by an action I did/didn't take.  Regret beats guilt to me.

[brii]

Neither.

I don't allow guilt or regret to take up space in my head.   It's a waste of time.

[AliJoi5]

Well I think you can always try to right a wrong to some extent, where guilt is concerned, and so there's hope in that.  Regret is a more complicated emotion, in my opinion.  I've been hampered by it a bit in my life, as I think most of us have.  But I always try to remind myself that regret is simply the past crippling us in the present.  And you go on and try to make better, healthier choices.  What else can ya do! 

[occasionalrain]

Sometimes there is both, I had a childhood friend, we stayed friends until we married. Our husbands weren't compatible so we drifted apart. She divorced and I should have called her, meant to, but I didn't make the effort. I regret that because one day I saw her obit in the paper, she was only 49. So I have regret and guilt.

Another friend who was married met and fell in love with someone at her gym. She changed gyms and lost him. A year later her husband divorced her to marry his secretary. So, she lives with regret. She should have followed her heart because life is short and you can't know the choices others are making. 

[ladyroxanne]

i have both to some small extent.  i choose not to allow it to rule or affect my life so along with some other painful memories they are safely locked away.  i time to time will bring them out and rethink them, but it changes nothing.  what's passed is past and what's done is done.