The taste of regret

I occasionally get a kick in the solar plexus from some bit of karma lurking in my past which seems wildly out of proportion to the 'original offence'. It happened today - a sudden flashback to a situation badly handled in my thirties. Some clerk was careless and my salary hadn't been paid on time and I got angry with the Finance Director and then he got angry back. I handled it badly, felt bad, and apologised. Maybe luckily I moved to a new job a couple of months later. But that was all there was to it, a few ruffled feathers on both sides. Why a sudden surge of regret half a lifetime later? Why does it suddenly make me cringe to remember now? Why do I even remember it at all?

Regret seems a very disturbing thing to me and not easily understood. I once knew someone who claimed that their motto and guiding principle was "Never apologise, never explain" but I couldn't live from that perspective myself. I don't have much more or less to regret than most people, I've never killed anyone - yet - nor have I acted much from malice. Bad things I've done have usually been done 'in the heat of the moment' - in hot blood. In common with so many others I know I was once divorced and regrets around that mainly of the pragmatic "what might I have done to stop it all tipping off the rails?" kind. And who raises a family or works as a boss without compiling a sizable catalogue of regrets about choices made and things done? I don't know how my conscience would have coped with being a judge or a front line soldier, where intuitive choices have such drastic direct consequences for others. In situations like that you must just have to act honestly and to the best of your care and ability and accept that those consequences will be a part of it.

When I think of karma like this - what you might call "your regular karma" eh? -I think of the sange verse."All the evil committed by me is caused by beginningless greed, hate and delusion, All the evil is committed by our body, mouth and mind. I now confess everything wholeheartedly". With bows, it can be offered up, the consequences accepted.

These small but sudden floods of regret like the one today aren't outside of that, but they feel very different. They are more 'existential' somehow, like lumps in custard.

I'll tell you a secret. I sometimes wake up at night sweating at the memory of something truly awful that I saw once. I can't remember where or when or the context but perhaps it was in a cafe on holiday, or in a car park. A distracted guy in his thirties nearby was berating his five year old son about spilling something or some other minor problem. And then suddenly that child crumpled under some terrible unseen weight of guilt and regret, profoundly apologising for his mortal sense of inadequacy, pleading and crying out "I'm sorry daddy, I'm so sorry, I'm really really sorry". Truly awful, I still weep for that child sometimes. When life kicks us hard in the teeth with that kind of grief and regret and we are so lost in the dark God help us all.