a life of regret...

In the tenets of Bushido, it is a sin for a samurai to feel regret. There is also this long discussion about differentiating remorse from regret.From the western perspective, "regret is a posion that kills a person"...or something like that. I really can't remember anymore and besides, eastern philisophy has always been dear to me.

The point, ladies and gentlemen, is, that in the universal context, regret is something we should strike from our persona. Regret is defined as (1/v) to mourn the loss of (2/v)to be very sorry for [m-w.com]. At first glimpse, it seems that regret is a very natural thing to feel. Then why must we strive not to "regret" anything?

In my moments of introspection (aka: any moment I am alone...LOL) I can't help but think back on the 22 years I've lived my life. No matter how hard I try, regret seems to be at the forefront of my thoughts always. I daresay it's not a healthy thing to do, ponder on past failures and what-ifs that is...but I do more than just learn from my mistakes, I relive them everyday. I'm not one to preach about how this makes me monumentally better than the lot of you, it just makes me a person who lives his life smothered by the shadow of regret.

I have also come to conclude that (in my case at least) regret always comes hand in hand with envy and more than a reasonable amount of self-doubt.

For example, I had this friend (yes, past tense...and no, he isn't dead, were just not friends anymore) Keith back in high school. He loves rock, and not just the run of the mill rock that the average person likes, he likes the rare, undeground and bootleg variety. I'll even venture as far as considering him cool. He's also quite easy on the eyes, except for tobacco teeth, which is easily remedied nowadays. He was also born into a charmed life. With a well-off chinese business man for a father and a well-payed financial expert for a mother. I could say he has it all, but he doesn't. He isn't smart...AT ALL. I'm referring to the genric kind of smarts here, more of linguistics, arithmetic and sciences. But does it matter, no, I believe it doesn't.

I, on the other hand, was born to a middle class family. My parents have spent their fortune and spent all succeeding years working their bones to dust to send off three children to respectable schools. I used to be a pop-tart but I'm now proud to say that I enjoy better, more sophisticated genres of music. I'm fat, brown skinned and have long unruly and wavy hair. Yeah, I'd classify myself as below avearge in the looks department. I may be a depressed idiot, but I'm a realist at heart and I don't live a jaded life. I got top grades in elementary but vetnured into more social endeavors in high school hence the average grades. I was ok in college, not at par with most my classmates but I always got through everything with minimum exertion. Yet, I still consider myself an intellectual albeit an intellectuall without credentials...the worst kind if you ask me.

Now, let's compare notes. I took a five-year engineering course with a one term thesis extension while he took a four-year multimedia arts degree. The difference? I didn't fail basic college algebra three times. Now, a lot of you would venture out into deciding that I should be more successful...it's only fair right? Alas, that isn't the case. He took on freelance work when he graduated. He worked when he wanted to work and took home around thrity to sixty grand for every project he did. So, assuming he completed one project per month, he has it good.All of this happened while I was working a call center job to support my tuiton fee and thesis expenses. I was fairly good at it and should have been promoted last January and (hopefully) just today (more promotions were given today and all my former co-workers were sure I'd make higher management by now) as well. But I had to quit because of the whole Christmas bonanza and of course, my brother's January wedding. Now, I have an empty bank account and sore fingers from applying online almost all the time. I don't even turn my laptop off anymore. All the while, Keith stopped working to go study film in the new film school in Cebu (y'know? the cool one...) I even bet he's paying his own way through...just thinking about how much he's saved up already. Now I'm waiting for an engineering job that offers mediocre pay (and that's before taxes are applied) just to fight my way to a better paying job in Singapore.

All I can say is, I envy a lot of people in the world and could never justify why my life sucks. What I wouldn't do to be royalty right now, or even a billionaire's son but we never get to decide anything before we're born right? I regret being bron into my family and regret even more the fact that I had so many chances to be special, to break away from a dead-beet's life but was too stupid to capitalize on all those opportunities. I could have been as successful as Herbert (God knows I have the brains), more popular than Ramon (if I had just eaten the right kinds of foods), more successful than my brother (given the chance).

What do I have to show for all the years I've lived? Nothing, absolutely nothing...I'm a depressive, sexually-confused, penniless, jobless, fat, grey-haired, unsuccessful, self-abusive prick. I wonder how I manage to plaster a smile on my face everytime I need to...