Thursday, May 24, 2007

A quote

I'm always amazed when people say, "You know, if I had to live my life over again, I'd do it all the same."

And that was Hitler talking.

I'm one of those people (God, I hope there are others anyway) who feels embarrassed by 95% of everything I've ever said, done, thought or felt. I feel abiding, oppressive shame and just about every memory I have comes burdened with remorse of some kind. And I'm not only talking my years of drinking and taking drugs. I mean my sober years, too. Now as well. I'll likely regret this post. I hate confessions.

But there they are on the tube, people doing riffs "I'd do it all the same again." I watch them with great envy and just a bit of disbelief. Really? The whole thing the same way? And maybe it's true.

I bring this up for a simple reason. Today I came across a line from an unidentified British poet who wrote in the period just after John Milton. Now this dude knew what he was talking about: "Above all gifts give me the ability to relive my life so that I might expunge the errors and calamities that afflicted it."

I'm waiting for his appearance on Oprah.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen.
Those were the days, my friend.
Bob Renk

Anonymous said...

Bob's an old friend of mine who knew me during the worst of my falling down oblivion years. We both share the good fortune of having sons who turned out very very well. Bob, or anybody else who wants towrite me off-blog, ejgorman99@aol is the address. Ed Gorman

Steve Malley said...

I've never quite got the 'no regrets' crowd either. I'm happy with where I am at the moment, and my mistakes were lessons needed learning. But I'm very, very glad I don't have to go back and relive them. Very.

Maybe I'll put myself down as 'had a few, but then again, too few to mention...'

Cap'n Bob said...

Some things I've done were so stupid and shameful I'd rather die than relive them. I can only hope that as I head towards my sunset years I've achieved enough wisdom to avoid doing those things again.

Anonymous said...

There might be a sweet smell to success, failure on the other hand is best scraped off your shoe...