Regrets

Did you read the post "What makes us human?"

We tried to keep it light by leaving out the regrets.

Regrets are one of the things that make us human. At least as long as we are unable to find manifestations of regret in our fellow animals.

The ethical question in the K-land newsroom then became "does that mean we strip people who have never had regrets of the attribute human"?
No, to us it is a rhetorical question. We ask it to see where our boundaries are.

If you have not experienced some serious regret in your life, you are either very young, or we invite you to look again. If you still don't find anything, lucky you.

It was NPR that led us there. On the tenth anniversary of the war nobody wants to remember (a way to avoid regrets), they had an interview with a military police woman. She had served in Iraq and asked her superiors to leave her out of "novel" interrogation methods. These methods, destined for later fame through photos of Abu Ghraib prison were tried out in her unit, whose commander was later praised as a visionary hero until his pants got in the way.

We blinked when we heard the part of these methods being first tried out under the hero man, but that's for history to deal with.

Our interest in the police woman was in how she expressed the experience and how it had transformed her. Her regret in simply stepping aside and not trying to do more struck a chord. Her integration of all of this into her life and her view of herself is quite moving. We find the world outside of the cookie-cutter images so much more interesting and worthwhile inhabiting.

Now would be a good time for the blogster to share his regret with you, wouldn't it?

It's not going to happen, despite the odd personal reference dotting the 500 or so posts of the blog.
We want to be able to make fun of ourselves and the world without the benefit of
an 'oh, they are so human', or 'how sweet they are not perfect' moment.
But we have unnamed friends who share as long as we promise to not name them. A local friend of the K-landnews gave us this.

My forming regret happened in my late teens, I think I was around 18 or 19. I was coming home from some trip and found myself inside a train station late, with maybe one train every hour, really late. At the other end of the ticket hall, there were two older men, arguing. Then, without warning, something slammed. I turned around and saw how one guy had grabbed the other by the shoulder and slammed him against a shop window. The window held, it was thick, then the attacker started to punch the other. There were few words, it was surprisingly quiet. I wanted to run over and intervene. Instead, I did not. I was afraid and left the station. A few minutes later, I went back in, but they were gone. I walked over to the location of the fight. There was no blood anywhere. It's been more than two decades ago, yet, my memory holds on to the event. I have been trying hard to not stand by like this ever again. It changed my perception of myself, it turned out I was not the courageous man from books and movies after all.

As long as we can learn, it will be fine.

Or are we just trying to convince ourselves to lessen the impact?