Regrets — cont'd.

My previous post gave the story. Now for my current thoughts about it.


There can easily be unforeseen consequences for our actions. Sometimes they are not a problem, but sometimes they can be so unwanted that we would have done things differently if we had known how things would turn out.

Was my uncles death the result (indirectly) of my speaking to him as I did? There's no way of being sure, but it seems very possible. And I'm sure that I would not have spoken as I did if I had any idea that he would die in a few days.

When there are unforeseen and unwanted consequences to our actions, it seems to me that we shouldn't blame ourselves for what happened. Of course, we are saddened that things turned out the way they did, but that doesn't mean that we should consider ourselves at fault.

But I don't think we can consider ourselves completely off the hook just because we would have done things differently if we had known what was going to happen. Even if we aren't to blame for what happened, there may be a lesson in it for us.

As I look back on myself that evening in early 1982, it seems to me that I wasn't loving enough toward my uncle, who had tried to be good to me. I made the mistake of seeing him as an intruder into my mother's life, creating in my mind some kind of opposition between them. (A Freudian might think that I also saw him unconsciously as a rival.) Because of that, I intervened in a situation where perhaps I shouldn't have, thinking that my mother would just let herself be subordinated to him. Of course, if it was knowably a matter of keeping him alive, I'm sure she would have wanted to postpone her visit to Japan. So the lessons for me are to try to care more about others, not being too narrowly focused on myself and one or two others, and not to butt into other people's situations when it isn't needed.

All of this review has enabled me to see myself as less of a villain than I had previously thought, but I still think that if I had been a better person, I might have done better.

At the funeral, the priest — a third cousin who was also a good friend of his — said "I think that when death came to him, it came as a friend," because of his declining health which had taken away his ability to ski and play golf and perform other activities he had enjoyed and even to perform various household tasks, like opening jars.

So my conclusion is we shouldn't blame ourselves for unwanted consequences of our words or actions. If we can say, "I'd have done it differently if I had known what would happen," then it's not our fault. But if there is a lesson for how to do better in the future, if there was an honest mistake, we can try to remember that lesson and try not to make that mistake again.