Je Ne Regrette Rien, Edith Piaf
My Facebook saga (Part 2)
In a previous blog I wrote about my Facebook misadventures, but I am here to tell you that every cloud has a silver lining. So I am going to fold into this entry a side-trip I took while trying to find a way of getting unbanned from Facebook. It’s a meditation on an altogether different topic that came up as a result: dealing with regret. This topic–regret for all the idiotic things I have done in my life–could fill volumes. Even so, I will try hard to be brief.
It could fill volumes, but it would always be the same damn thing: concerning something stupid or mean or insensitive I said or did that I now regret deeply. I am haunted by these moments. I might be out running or filling my grocery cart at Whole Foods and all of a sudden I’ll remember how I once told someone I had no business telling, about an intimate aspect of my sexual life; or conversely made an equally inappropriate pronouncement about that person’s sexual life.
I’m even haunted by relatively innocuous stupidities such as how in 6th grade, a crush of mine had left behind his patrol badge for crossing guard duty. When the teacher commented on this, I jumped up and yelled: Can I bring it to him? The class erupted in laughter, echoing through the decades. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. My inner critic reminds me of many such walking dead faux pas, mostly when I am alone with my thoughts, in moments that should have been meditative and peaceful.
Not everyone suffers this way. But I have the impression that there is a large cohort of people living with such unwelcome memories, mewling or barking from somewhere within, often from some distant past. Even a long-ago friend, who seemed immune to such torments–and who regularly insisted ‘don’t look back, something may be gaining on you’–fell prey in old age to intrusive visitations from his past. In any case, thousands of existing self-help books attest to the pervasiveness of this sort of self-preoccupation. Maybe such ruminations are a punishment for those of us living too much a life of ease, as a thorn in our sides and a reminder that privilege comes with a cost.
That being said, I am here to tell a story of redemption. A tiny little sliver of a story, but uplifting nevertheless.
Back to my Facebook saga, and my recent banishment (see previous Blog post). Surprising numbers of techie friends did not seem to know how to help unbanish me. This probably is related to the fact that young techie people aren’t on Facebook. One of the people I contacted through LinkedIn was a friend I had known in my grad school days and had since held a prominent position in a computer company. We had corresponded off and on over the years, until I went to visit him, which is when things between us went kaput.
He and his family lived in a magnificent house with a patio and gardens the likes of which are usually seen only in Florence or Babylon. What stood out especially was a mosaic trough that had recently been sent over from Pompeii. I stood divided between wonder and envy as I watched water trickling from the spout and nourishing the lush plants that grew all around.
As we were finishing the tour, my friend led me to the front of his property to enjoy the view. He pointed to a house below that his family had bought up and that he was about to demolish. For the panorama, he said, and a straight shot down to the lake.
It happened that at this time, I was living in a mouse-and cockroach-infested student housing project, where the biggest blow to any semblance of garden or vista was the removal of the single oak that had towered over our vast communal lawn. I felt bitterly the gap between my circumstances and those of my friend, and I remember making unsubtle and downright rude comments about the divide between the rich and the poor.
I now look at this sort of envy I felt as somewhat hypocritical, since I eventually became a doctor, and though never anywhere nearly as rich as my friend, have managed a modest but comfortable life. But even if I had remained poor, I’d have had no business holding it against my friend, whose brilliance combined with opportunity, had made his success possible.
But back to our encounter. As I stood there smoldering, my friend retrieved from his study a gadget that turned out to be a sort of diary. He snapped my picture, recorded a few sentences, and stamped the entries with the date of my visit. In short, as he explained, he kept such a record to commemorate every single day of his life. This is not good for someone tormented by regrets. Even if the said record is created by someone else. Or rather: especially if someone else owns the record. All these years ago, and forever proof positive of the fact that I behaved like an ass.
My friend and I stopped communicating after that visit. He once dropped me a line through LinkedIn. But when I got banned from Facebook, and no one seemed to know what to do, I wrote him for advice. And I apologized. I said I was sorry for my rudeness and my dismissiveness and my Pompei-envy. Not exactly in those words, but an apology nonetheless.
He couldn’t help me with my Facebook page, but he accepted my apology. He said it was all okay. It was a strange feeling. It was like going back into his electronic notebook and changing the text of his diary entry. It was like having him write: “Lovely visit from Caroline. So much positive energy.”
He went on to tell me what he was up to, and I shared what was going on in my life. One regret less, a baby step across time.