Need of Regrets
“Don’t regret”. Such a good looking combo. Regret is negative. Don’t is negative. Negative with negative becomes positive. Such beautiful sync. Well, what if I take it too far? How far of spelling these words is positive? Will it at any point on the scale turn back to negative?
When I started my job in corporate, I was conservative of money. That was the trait I’ve been trained on for better part of my life. But as I earned more and broke into new circles, I started spending more. Bit, by bit. Hundreds per outing changed to thousand, then to multiple thousands. All along, I kept repeating one single mantra “Don’t regret”.
Do you know what happens when you keep increasing your financial outflow on a mantra? Where does that lead to? Yup! You succumb to debt. It keeps increasing and increasing, until one day you cry at 2 in the night that you are not able to control your expenditure. Happened to many I spoke to; And happens to everyone else on that pie whom I didn’t speak to cause they are too shy to accept the fact that they are in debt. And then comes the next train of “Being in debt is cool”. So you ride that train.
I was speaking to a friend who went on a good South Indian trip. He said, “That trip costed me Rs.10k. I don’t actually have that much money, so I had to spend it on my credit card. But, I had a really good time. I don’t regret going on such a trip.” I was shocked and happy at the same time. That’s the dilemma. Happy that he had a good time. But the words that come out of me were of shock. “If you would’ve gone to USA with a group of close friends for a week, you’ll have an exceptional holiday. But that doesn’t mean you can’t regret. You are gonna regret while paying back the loan for next 5 years of the money which you’ve used on that trip. You can’t use ‘I don’t regret’ all the time.”
As I said out the words, I understood them myself too. I could keep spending time and money on all fun not regretting then, but I’m going to definitely regret later. On the other side, I also can’t regret about every single purchase I make. I need to draw the threshold myself.
We blur that threshold cause we either don’t comprehend the value of money and time, or we keep on calculating it too much. I sat on it for a long time to rub away the smudges around the threshold to make it clearer day by day. That a story for the next blog!