Quizás, Quizás, Quizás [1]
Of the many clichés I despise (insert suitable irony-inducing cliché here), among those jostling for one of the top slots would be the words of the wise interviewee: "Regrets? I don't have any regrets from life. It has been a satisfying and fulfilling life".s-and-f life, my mule's daddy. There must be an equal and opposite (Tri-Newtono-Legalic) cliché suggesting snootily that "such 'ir-regretfuls' must not have lived a life at all" that I can take refuge in. When I traceback my own life to first principles, it hardly seems like a sequence of optimal decisions, does it? Littered with little forks that turned out to be major junctions, and major junctions that did not lie about their importance, there are "what-ifs" painfully strewn about.
Counter-factual history is not merely about what would have happened had Babar not stopped to ask for directions to India, it can also be intensely personal. What is more, like the curious cases of our historical figures ending with two impossibly different birthdates, our personal views of our own history is very revisionist, and usually tend to make us look pretty. Scrape what's left of the diem, lad!
Speaking of regrets, I think I regret beginning this post without end in sight. Maybe, I'll come back to it later. Perhaps (make it two more times).
[1] Source material
1 comment:
Good post :-).
If you knew any better, you'd not make those muddle-headed decisions, would you? Given the data you had and your limited intelligence, if the decision seemed optimal, I'd happily say "no regrets". You never have enough data anyway.
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