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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Daily Cascade
Since my old blog "Everyday Canvas "  became overfilled, here's a new one. This new blog item will continue answering prompts, the same as the old one.
Cool water cascading to low ground
To spread good will and hope all around.
August 18, 2025 at 10:50am August 18, 2025 at 10:50am
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Prompt:
"I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them."
Kevin Costner
Do you often regret things and what do you do about your feelings of regret, if you have any?
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It is a painful echo, a bitter pill. Yet, such a powerful teacher, too, this thing called regret. We may all carry this emotional burden, this negative, uncomfortable feeling. "If only I had done this..."
I don't often give in to regret, but I do regret some things, especially unsaid words or words said thoughtlessly. Looking back into my life, I might say that I regret things or rather decisions I made at one time or another hastily, but at the end, they all proved to be learning experiences. In the least, they thought me to be more tolerant with others' thoughtless acts.
Regret is an emotional response to a past choice or having failed to take action when needed or having taken the wrong action. That "if only" feeling usually makes up a scenario where a different action or decision would have a better result. But then, who knows!
Possibly, it is my mind that acts this way or maybe others, too, suffer the many choices to pick from that their minds offer. I mean if others are like me, it shows that we're all suffering from an alternate-reality-seeking syndrome. Then, maybe this has to do with our own vision of being and acting the ideal self. So, it may just be that, when our response or the lack of it goes against our values and aspirations, regret butts in with a, "Hey, I'm here!" screech.
That screech, however, possibly means, ""Remember this feeling, so you make a better decision next time." So, regret can become a guide for future actions, since we, hopefully, have learned from the past. A bitter medicine, yes, but it directs us toward better actions and more productive behavior.
In my case, regret taught me, if nothing else, this one thing: "Look forward, not back!" Still, this isn't easy to do, time after time. After all, like most anyone, I am human, imperfect, yet capable of learning. At least, I do hope so!
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