FROM early on in my life I have never believed in wasting time regretting. Oh, maybe brief 24-hour regrets about behaving a little too boisterously at a party or a, shall we say, momentary lapse in a brief encounter.
But regrets over life choices? No. For the simple fact is that each of us, unless in exceptional circumstances, only do what we want to do at the time. At the time.
We do whatever we do because we believe it is for the best, or we do it because nature, nurture and our own thought processes find our choice right.
I was therefore disturbed to have a conversation today with a mutual friend of a man I have met just once who lives in a nearby village.
English, in his mid 80s, he has long been a familiar figure in his straight-backed walk through the village to the tabac or the bistro.
Tweed jacket and cords in cold weather, pressed Bermudas and Polo shirts in heat, Panama on head, he presents as the typical expat (not migrant like me) once familiar in the south of France.
A widower, he arrived here 15 years ago with a long-time friend from schooldays. She was his friend, nothing more, nothing less, and together, with no money worries, they had set off on an adventure.
For some reason the adventure stalled in my neck of the woods and they bought a town house as a stopgap to rest before heading further and further south into different lands.
She faltered. Became ill. He nursed her. She died. No words can tell of those desperate years.
And for three years now, he’s been alone and each year he becomes a little less able – felled by the cruelty of ageing as the heart stumbles and clots form to rush to the brain.
And each time he returns to his house willing it to sell so he can return to a country he once knew, where he was a successful businessman with his own company. However, he’s no longer sure of doing that either.
Where should he go? His only relative is an elderly niece who has her own problems. Most of his friends are dead. He yearns for it though.
It goes without saying his French is limited. His well-travelled friend was the foreign speaker and arranger.
He is about to return home again after another hospital emergency entry and a period of rehabilitation and is refusing to even think of no longer being able to drive.
My friend and his wife have found themselves unwitting ‘carers’ and conduits for all his needs.
It’s a surprisingly common thing here among the expats who turn to the kindness of strangers for help in extremis. Yes, payments are made, but believe me, they are no real recompense for the consideration and availability given.
God knows I’ve been fortunate and grateful for those who have become good friends above all.
Anyway, back to this man. My friend said what he thought was just another sentence in his story but one which brought on this column.
‘The problem with X,’ he said, ‘is that he sits thinking and worrying about the past. All he regrets. Often hour after hour even when distracted by radio or television. He talks over and over about his regrets.’
Living alone, as I’ve told you often enough, and in the country, it is so easy to get sidelined by bad introspection.
‘What does he regret?’ I asked, for I know this is a man who has no financial worries whatsoever, and lives in some considerable comfort after his working life.
‘Everything,’ said my friend. ‘Leaving his business, even though he wasn’t quite up to continuing; coming to France; losing touch with old friends; making this choice instead of that…’
Oddly, with his failing health, he doesn’t ruminate on death. Only on regrets. He still plans for a long future.
Interestingly, fretting over an old friend he had fallen out with eons before, he contacted him and made peace a few years ago and, such is his nature, he sent him money to ease his way.
Yet he will spend none of his, not insubstantial pot, on himself. ‘No, it’s family money…inherited. Not really mine.’
He has one living relative who will get some but the rest will go to charity.
Meanwhile it stacks up in various bank accounts here and abroad and he denies himself many pleasures.
God, aren’t people and their foibles utterly fascinating?
Unless you have oodles of it, in my little world, money is to be used in the here and now.
But the vision of this man sitting in his chair going over and over his life is sadly compelling in its ultimate futility.
Sure, the older one gets, the more unwelcome thoughts slither into the brain and whisper, ‘you were wrong, you were wrong there. Oh, you caused harm there.’
And perhaps one did and yes, regret arrives …for a second, no more, and one rationalises why and moves on.
It doesn’t mean one lightly skips over choices made and their consequences.
Perhaps not having regrets is actually the acceptance of those choices and living with them.
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