Enigma Variations

by André Aciman

This is love, he would have said, diffidence is love, fear itself is love, even the scorn you feel is love. Each of us comes by it the wrong way.

“Yes, the past is a foreign country,” I said, “but some of us are full-fledged citizens, others occasional tourists, and some floating itinerants, itching to get out yet always aching to return.

I miss it now for the-days-when, the way I miss places I’ve never traveled to or things I’ve never done.”

capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren’t unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will.

Regret is how we look forward to things we’ve long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction,

We’re torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks.