Regret is a ghost of love. Regret is a nicer self that we send into the past from time to time, even though we know it’s too late to change what we said, or did. We do it because it’s human: a thing of our kind. We do it because we care, drawn by threads of shame that only fray and wither in the sea of regret. Along the way regret, even more than love, teaches us that harm creates harm, and compassion creates compassion. And having done its work, regret fades to the nothing that all things become.
