This journey that I am on is one that is weird and also satisfying. For 6 of the 7 months, I battled with great depression. So deep I was in it I was even suicidal at times. But the love of family got me through. And even though the feelings of depression continue to linger, I feel that I have conquered the brunt of the feeling. Right now, the feeling that plagues me is regret.
Psychologists call regret the emotion of “what if”. But this what if is if things do not go according to plan. It is like the gambler who takes 10k to the casino. If he loses all his money, he will start to think what if he never gambled but used the money for something else? But if he wins some money, he will not have the emotion of regret in him.
In my case, it is a bit more complex than that. Because the decision to leave my job was a calculated one. It was premeditated. And like Santiago in The Alchemist, the first few months were blessed with beginner’s luck. Things were going my way. It felt I had made the right decision and all was right in the world.
It was only until later that luck ran out and reality faced me. Reality that I am in Harrismith, a small lost town at the end of the Free State. A town unconducive for entrepreneurship. It was only later that the reality struck me that I was no longer a lecturer but a nobody.
I began to regret my decision. Wondering if what I had done was the right call. I missed being a lecturer. I missed guiding students in the world of business and marketing. I missed my soccer team. I missed my soccer captain teaching me all the latest lingo in the new generation.
My biggest regret came when I was so caught up in my own world that I could not be there for the woman I loved. She was experiencing the pain of losing a child, our child, and I wasn’t there. That is a regret that I believe that I will never outlive. But the die had been cast hence it is regret.
Because what if I had paid more attention to her at the time? And within this question lies the beauty of regret. This emotion allows one to press a rewind button on past events to reevaluate them. It allows a person to explore different versions of themselves in a past event.
Like the regret of missing my students. Indeed I miss them. So naturally I asked myself, what if I stayed? What if I continued being a lecturer? Thinking about this, I can see the path that would have led. I would have continued being a lecturer, continued my studies and perhaps ended up being a professor. By this time, I’d probably be age 45 – 50. I could have perhaps been in a position to buy myself a beautiful house and maybe afford that German SUV.
You see when you play that rewind button, this sounds okay. And indeed, on the surface it does. I’d end up being a middle-class citizen with a good life. This life deemed good because of the middle-class environment that encapsulated my upbringing. But the magic of regret is that you can compare that reality with the reality of the decision you made. So naturally, the next question I ask myself is, what would have been the cost of that life?
After all, God is not mocked, you reap what you sow. I realise that in that life, the price I would have paid was my dreams. The dream of owning a G-Wagon. The dream of owning a beautiful beach house on the coasts of Umhlanga. The cost of that middle-class life would have been all of my dreams and aspirations.
And herein is the power of the emotion of regret. Because I look at this replay and I realise that my decision was sound. My decision was right. My decision was for the realisation of my dreams.
Of course, it is difficult. Of course, it is hard. But when comparing the two lives, that would have been and the one that I am living now, the power of regret makes me realise that I am indeed on the right path.
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