I've heard people say, the greatest achievement one could hope for, is to live one's life fully and without regret. What, then, is regret? A choice one feels should not have been made? A path that should not have been taken? I suppose the basic definition for a regret is a mistake.
Therefore, when people say, "Live without regrets!", they are essentially saying, "Live without making any mistakes!".

Now I've also heard a decent number of people claim that one can learn from one's mistakes. So isn't it true that if no one ever made a decision that he or she regretted, made a mistake, that no one would ever learn much of anything?

Imagine if you will, an alternate universe. A twist in the cosmic laws that are in effect today; made up by a gaggle of large brained scientists in fancy white lab coats sitting around a big metal conference table. And in this universe there is a galaxy, and in this galaxy there is a solar system, wherein lies a planet whose Government decided not to accept any mistakes that anyone would make.

If one of the people of this planet made a mistake, he would be dunked into a large container filled with a sticky jelly. Once this jelly was on your skin, you would begin to babble random, mindless facts about anything you happened to see. This is because the Government on that planet wanted to make the people practice making correct observations and learn not to make inaccurate assumptions.

For example, if a child were to answer a question incorrectly in one of the planet's schools, the lad would be submerged into the jelly and begin to shout things such as "The sky is orange!". (Keep in mind that on this planet, certain compounds in the atmosphere reflecting the light at certain angles caused the sky to appear orange.)

And if the boy were to see a lady wearing a green and purple hat he would cheerily exclaim, "That is a hideous hat you are wearing!".

This form of punishment also explains why the average person attends school for well over 34 years.

The obvious downside to this plan is that no one is created to be a perfect, mistake-free robot. Except for the Government of course, it makes the laws after all. And the unfortunate result of this is that everybody on the planet was eventually thrown into the vats of goo and were all transformed into machines that vomited obvious facts.

And then all the Government had to govern were people who couldn't actually do anything worth governing. Nobody accomplished anything new, this is because attempting to create new technology requires a risk of failure, the risk of a mistake. And the people's minds were melted into mushy, ugly balls of false perfection.

The planet's civilization crumbled. The people of the planet were too busy being perfect to worry about their basic needs. And they became hungry.

Being hungry is a perfect example of a common mistake that a person's body makes. You see, the stomach requires food, or, people fuel. And not giving one's stomach adequate fuel is a mistake. When one allows this mistake to be prolonged, the stomach rectifies the situation by digesting the excess fat one has accumulated. If it is still not given fuel, it then digests the muscle on one's bones. If still no fuel is provided, the stomach then digests one's internal organs. This is commonly referred to as: starving to death.



The people on this planet starved to death.

The reason these people starved is because the citizens who would have normally produced food had their minds melted into mushy, ugly balls of false perfection and could not do a damn thing about the hunger problem.


So the next time someone proposes the idea of living with no regrets, kindly decline. The reason being is this: A man's character is made up supremely of the scars of his life. The hardships. The mistakes, and the lessons that follow. I would much rather be a man of character then be a man who has never known failure.