What if I regret?

This is a question many people like asking others to think about when they’re faced with major decisions. Often, it’s also the last (and lowest) form of resistance against someone’s decision you don’t like.

In any case, it is a question I hate to answer.

I hate this question because in the first place, it doesn’t even make sense. For every choice I make, there is an infinite number of choices I’m giving up, and therefore infinite number of situations in which I’ll regret, which then means that the probability of me regreting is 1 for any decision I make and therefore, I should never make up my mind!

Besides, it also implies that if I prefer not to do something now, I should still do it just in case I later regret not doing it. Can you imagine forcing yourself to go sky-diving when you’re terrified of heights just in case you develop a love for heights and regret passing out on an opportunity? That’s plain dumb, but many people do it anyway.

Regrets are overrated. I might as well do something I’d rather do now and risk the possibility of regreting it later. 

If I regret, so be it. I can live with some.

Jaded

I’m having days of immense tiredness, which I can’t explain.

There’s a lot of work to do and a lot of fun planned for. But even though I don’t seem to be working as much as I used to, there are some days when I’m overcome by exhaustion. The fun doesn’t excite me either.

And late nights, many late nights, very very late nights. Mostly I while away the nights watching TV half-heartedly while listening to music or reading. Sleeping time is abnormal (by my own terms), I could sleep for 6 good hours and still feel exhausted.

Maybe it’s because it’s the last school term, and my life after 3 months is a vast unknown. Or maybe drive does run out, and takes time to be regenerated. Hell, maybe it’s just because I’m at the low of what Taoists call energy cycles. Or maybe a little bunny in Ecuador hopped and created a change in air pressure which resulted in some air current that knocked the life out of me.

Whatever it is, I don’t like it. Please go away.

Pleasures in delusion

Steve Lopez, a journalist at the Los Angeles Times writes about Nathaniel Ayers, a talented musician suffering from paranoid schizophrenia who lives and plays his 2-string violin on the harsh streets of Skid Row amongst drug addicts, murderers, pimps and prostitutes. Haunted by his mental illness, he left Julliard, one of the world’s most exclusive music schools, 30 years ago and is now living in his own world on the streets of LA near a statue of Beethoven.

Nathaniel doesn’t have to worry about a daughter who will be just fifteen when he hits retirement age. His computer doesn’t crash. He doesn’t have to call his HMO six hundred times to scream about a doctor bill it refuses to cover. He doesn’t have to call a bank and threaten to strangle someone over a “thorough investigation” that has determined I was lying when I reported a case of identity theft and the loss of $3,000. Nathaniel is 100 percent off the books. No Social Security card, no driver’s license, no address, no living will, no job, no lawn to mow, no phone call to return, no retirement to plan for and no rules except his own.

The day of the Beethoven rehearsal, we walked one block down from Disney Hall and he told me he had to go to the bathroom.

“Just hold on,” I said. “My office is only a block away and you can go there.”

“Mr. Lopez,” he said, looking at me like a six-year-old, “I can’t wait.”

“Well, why didn’t you go back at Disney Hall?” I asked.

“I didn’t think of it,” he said. “But I really have to go bad.”

Across the street was the Los Angeles County Courthouse. In the garden was a tree. Nathaniel made a dash for it, returning a minute later with a look of great relief.

How can I ever reel him back to the world of rules and regulations, of protocol and privies? He is tied to nothing but his passion and the world it delivers him into, a world in which the city is his orchestra and the conductor is a statue. He sees a swaying palm and hears violins. A bus roars by and gives him a bass line. He hears footsteps and imagines Beethoven and Brahms out for a stroll.

“I can’t survive,” he once told me of his refusal to come indoors, “if I can’t hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it.”

- The Soloist, by Steve Lopez

A thought

The most terrible thing is not that life is tragic.

What’s worse is when life is really good, but you can’t enjoy it.

This happens when you have an air ticket booked for Australia, but on it, it says “depart on 4 Jun” instead of “depart on 4 Mar”.

And on 5 Mar you have a killer paper.