Regret Is Hell
November 15, 2021
The affliction of pain that follows a seemingly regretful act in one's life is potent enough to be held onto for much longer than needed. It's the ultimate form of torture in knowing that it's fully impossible for acknowledged wrongdoing to be reversed. Or, rather, an opportunity to have been seized upon. This moment of realization, as the truth of reality begins to take its place, is where the submergence toward a living mental hell ensues. Your mind begins to turn against you, like a vulture feeding off the carcass of a grim reflection of a moment's past. The stain of even a moment's poor judgment or blind-eyed rationale can sit forever if one lets it.
Across various religious contexts, Hell is the eventual state of the sinning. The post-mortem destination where those who fail to lead righteous and holy lives go to endure everlasting sinister torture that follows these failures. The foundation of pain that this concept creates is rooted in two domains of the same cause. Hell is so because of the practical asset; demonic entities, helpless misery, and evil essence of conscious living. But moreover, the true premise that the concept of hell lies upon is mental.
Close your eyes and imagine enduring this state. You're in a place that will inflict the most incomprehensible torment a conscious being could endure. Moreover, this state is eternal and absolute, of which there is no escape. What would your thoughts consist of? You were once living life on Earth as you saw fit, free of all things similar to this moment's torment. Life and consciousness were once in your hands. If only you had done right in the eyes of God. Your spirit of sanity is now spoiled; this is your life. How could one deal with such failure?
Hell and its contents are built upon regret. The pain of recollection floods the mind as one looks back on all the neglected opportunities to act in rectitude that arose. But in this context, there's no going back. In our current lives, however, this is not the case. But even so, human regret is rooted in either action or inaction. When we commit wrongdoing, this facet of regret springs from the pain of wishing we had not done so; action. The second angle of regret is when we miss the chance to change our course of direction or fail to rise to a challenge; inaction.
While these two are the pillars that uphold the foundation of human regret, there is a third angle to such pain. If we look at the timeframe of life on a linear scale, the state of inaction vastly outweighs that of action. The moments of action that add to our regret are only so frequent on this scale. We spend more time not doing, or not knowing, the things we must. For extended periods of time, we remain incognizant of the habits and values that bring life to its pinnacle; there is much to learn. This third face of regret is toward our thoughts. Failing to identify the patterns of thinking that kept you in your unevolved self. This continuum of self-ignorance is finite yet spreads across the linear scale in a way that other forms of regret can't. Going about your twenties and thirties while still managing to indulge in the ways that your forty-year-old self will look back at with avid disappointment. Or the recollection of the period in your life where you told yourself you had time, yet the future only proved that time was nothing but wasted. These realizations are orthodox, but not necessary. Once it rises to the surface after spending years beneath your mental threshold, it strikes the ego to its near-death.
"How did I not see that?"
"Why did I think that way?"
"If only I had spent more time doing..."
We don't know what we don't know, which makes it the challenge of a lifetime to step within the walls of the mind in an attempt to dissect our thinking while glancing at the future's disclosure of truth.
Avoiding regret is an active process, and only the proclivity of action can eliminate the most forms of regret that one will inevitably experience. If you are doing, you need not worry about the result or not doing. If you are aware of your mindset, thought patterns, and consistently learning how to develop your methods of approach, you need not worry about the result of "If only I had known." Taking action in this regard is the most pragmatic embodiment of “taking matters into your own hands.”
In this life, Hell only exists within the mind. While the ability to self-forgive is the work of a truly adept individual, it's only more so to avoid these situations entirely. Despite this, it’s no question that this feeling will remain everlasting among even the most experienced and exceptional; we’re human. But to what degree is a result of independent action.
The paths before you are clear: the path of action, or the path toward your grave that the pain of regret will ever so swiftly walk you toward if you allow it.