loss is an unintentional decline in or disappearance
of
a value rising from a contingency
a value is an efficacy a power a brightness
it is also a duration
-- David Antin, "Definitions for Mendy"
If I am to pass on the wisdom amassed in my time alive -- and, as a senior who took a year off before I even started college, I'm old enough to be some of your mothers -- the most important thing I can say is this: life is all about the contingencies. Not being able to see which streams of events led us here , it is impossible for us to negotiate our pasts as well as we pretend to. Think of all the adages -- "live and learn," "hindsight is 20/20," "the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing," and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.
They're all bullshit.
Not that I haven't made mistakes in my life. But how can I know now which things have cost me and which have gained? For example, if I hadn't gotten the occasional B+ ... or B ... or C+ ... in high school, maybe I would have ended up, you know, at one of the colleges that rejected me. (By the way, Yale, I'm not bitter or anything, but was it that C+? Or was it something I said? Or my breath? And also, sorry about that letter I sent the admissions office during my year off. I didn't really plan on sleeping with any of your professors to get in. It was just a stupid joke. Ummm, so, yeah.) And yet ...
And yet.
Not infrequently I curse myself for my behavior. I procrastinate, I'm prone to slackage and I adore pre-packaged foods. Mistake, mistake and mistake! Two days ago, I put in a veggie burger to heat as a snack two seconds before someone was like, "I'm going to Scoop Deville in a minute." MISTAKE!
Or maybe not. Regret is one thing --an uncontrollable acknowledgement of our inept reading of contingencies. This isn't any, "The past is history; the future a mystery; this moment is a gift; That is why this moment is called the present," crap. I regret all the time. I love regret. Regret is like my biggest motivator. It's what gets me up in the mornings. (Well, regret and Quaker Oats banana bread Oatmeal Squares.) But to regret is different than to acknowledge fault. Because we can't know what takes us where we're going. We can't even know where we're going. (Except towards death, probably.)
Last week, or something, Woody Allen said, "I've gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again, today." God. (God!?) I probably would too. And I guess that's terrible, but it's also kind of awesome (in a truer sense than the one in which I usually use that word.)
XOXO -- Yona
