Regrets

I was lecturing about time travel today in my philosophy class. Still not sure how I got on the subject, but it brought up a lot issues, for me anyway. We were talking about the propensity for some people to have regrets, to wish in a way to go back in time to certain points to redo choices, change outcomes. They not only wish this impossibility, they often spend an inordinate amount of time in the fantasy. The obvious lesson is to learn from these experiences, deal with the consequences, and change the future not the past. By the way, I heard a leading physicist talk a few years ago and he said something very fascinating. He believed that time travel will be possible, but we will never be able to travel to the past at this point: there will have to be a receiving unit built to "catch" the time traveller in the past. Since one hasn't been built at this point, there can be no travel to the current past. I had never thought about that.
As a result of the lecture, I started to think about my regrets. I suppose I deserve to have a few score of them, or at least some very severe ones. I don't. I do have two that haunt me. They seem minor, but they come back time after time. They involve two strangers who I never met, and I will not meet. They involve split decision indecision that cannot be reversed. One of these strangers will most likely not be in the same circumstance that I observed and the other is dead. I won't have a second chance with either.
In 1988, I was in between Peace Corps stints, teaching at the University of Akron. I was teaching a Reading and Study Skill class and taking a free course on the Harlem Renaissance as one of the perks of the job. At that point I knew I was taking a new Peace Corps assignment in Yemen at the end of the semester. I spent a lot of time on campus at the library and university center, enjoying the simple luxuries of teaching and studying. It was a rare time with little pressure and a great deal of freedom.
The university center was a big sprawling building with a very large food court (named The Chuckery). It was dark and didn't appear openly inviting, but people congregated there anyway. At one end there were large round tables where various groups of like minded individuals spent a great deal of time playing cards or dealing in abstract political issues. At the other end, near the food counters, were long lines of straight tables - those of us without a genre ate there, alone. People ate, studied, and at that time, drank beer. It was a strange place, but it was a place to be lonely.
In the late spring I noticed a very different student at my end of the food court. He was probably six foot two, two hundred and fifty pounds. He wore a simple white t-shirt and white shorts pulled way up over his belly. He had very short hair, was about forty years old, wore white sneakers and white socks and he was blind. His father would guide him into the place, bring him his food, then leave him alone to eat and go off to his class (I supposed). I was usually passing through when I saw him, and didn't think too much about him. One day though, I was sitting at a table when his father brought him over. He sat down about ten feet away from me and started to eat, staring aimlessly up and about. Like always, no one else sat near him in the ten minutes I sat there. I had a very strong urge to move down and talk to him, but did not. I thought about it, felt bad but resolved to do so the next time I saw him in the Chuckery. I walked past him feeling ashamed that I couldn't stop and even greet him. I never felt so inadequate, even though I knew I would do so the next time when I was more "prepared," He died a few days later.
I read it in the newspaper, they did a small feature on him the day after he died. In a few minutes I discovered things about his life that I could have heard from him. He was a long time ham radio operator and an active church member. He had returned to school and was excited by his new challenge. I didn't get to hear these things from him, and he didn't get to share them with me. There were probably hundreds, maybe thousands of us he didn't get to share with. All because we weren't comfortable enough to do what we should have done, what many of us would have liked to have done. I hesitated to extend a simple human courtesy to him, and I will pay for it for the rest of my life. I am by no means a victim or martyr, just haunted by the worst kind of ghost, a spectre of my own creation, my own guilt.
A few years later, on Martin Luther King Day, I was driving across town to an African-America art gallery to listen to students reading "I Have a Dream" and "I Have Been to the Mountaintop." I drove my pickup truck across town through the tail end of a big blizzard. I was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, work boots and a beard. As I was driving through a neighborhood near the gallery, I saw an elderly woman shoveling her sidewalk. In the few seconds as I approached and passed her, I knew she was laboring at her task, and was most likely very, very cold. Once again, I knew I should stop and help, a simple gesture that would have saved her an hour of work. I didn't. I kept driving to the gallery.
I got to the gallery early, and after a few minutes I noticed a smartly dressed woman enter the building with a notebook. She looked around, saw me and made a beeline over. She was a reporter and asked me several questions. It was nice to talk to her, somewhat flattering. It would take twenty four hours for me to figure out why she was so interested in talking to me. I picked up the same paper I had read those years ago, this time turning to the cultural section instead of the obituaries. Her article was there, and I began to read it. She mentioned me early on, and I immediately realized her attraction - she described me as a "rugged looking" man reading a South African fairy tale book. Translation - What was the redneck doing in an African-American art gallery on Martin Luther King Day?
I felt guilty again, and had some serious doubts about Karma. I should have stopped and helped that woman, should never have been at that gallery when that reporter came in, should never have been in the paper. I failed in an instant, but even in that brief moment I knew what I should have done, what I wanted to do. And again, I didn't do it.
I often feel lonely, and sometimes I remember these failures. I feel foolish for feeling sorry for myself, remembering that there are so many people in the world who have far less than I, who truly know what it means to be alone. Ironically now, these two failures make me feel better, which in turn introduces me to a new brand of sadness, the solipsistic sort. I failed these two people, not myself. I don't deserve to adopt their pain, their suffering as my own. Doing so is an extremely selfish act, far too self-indulgent.