Author’s Note: If you have not seen the movie American Beauty, or if you are easily offended, you may want to skip the YouTube clips attached, as they both potentially ruin the ending of the movie, and also contain some slightly racy material. You have been warned.

I’ve often been asked if I regret any of my tattoos. Why would I regret them? I mean that literally– what would it even mean to regret one of my tattoos? Would it mean that it’s a decision I made in the past that I can’t now un-make, and I no longer agree with? But wouldn’t that be applicable to all decisions?

Regret is pointless. It serves no function, just a small step away from its distant cousin, guilt. It is a projected emotion foisted upon the undeserving masses from those trying to leverage a moral ranking of superiority.

Thinking about it intuitively, regret is just an offshoot of fear– fear of being wrong and making an incorrect decision– which is also a pretty useless emotion. It is there to guide us in times when rational thought is not fast enough, when we don’t have all the facts yet we still have to pull the trigger, so to speak. We have been taught to be skeptical, to defer judgment, to remain “open-minded”.

“Dying people lie too. Wish they’d worked less, been nicer, opened orphanages for kittens. If you really want to do something, you do it. You don’t save it for a sound bite”. (Dr. House, House M.D.)

But decisions don’t wait. Life can’t be placed on hold, can’t be paused while we gather all the necessary data to ensure 100% accuracy. Life continues to roll on, to pass us, to move and change. And those that choose to live, will make choices and decisions to the best of their abilities, given the totality of the facts in front of them at any given moment. They will not be afraid. And if and when they choose incorrectly, they will not regret their choice. They will simply learn from it, and choose better next time.

“Right and wrong do exist. Just because you don’t know what the right answer is– maybe there’s even no way you could know what the right answer is– doesn’t make your answer right or even okay. It’s much simpler than that. It’s just plain wrong”. (Dr. House, House M.D.)

Despite this fact, House never stops to question himself. He simply moves on. He decides, to the best of his ability, at any given moment, in any given situation. And he lives without regrets. Gather the facts, make the decision, apply the decision, gather more facts– the gears move, the cycle continues.

The only wrong action is inaction. The only wrong decision is indecision. Life is a process of movement and change, of forward progression, not staleness and stillness. To be frozen into skepticism and inaction due to fear of wrongness is to lie down and die. To take steps– even wrong steps– is not only okay and admissible, but necessary. It’s how we learn the right way. One will stumble on the way to learning to walk, and soon thereafter sprint. Removing fear allows for progress and success. And the concomitant orientation is the rejection of regret as an after-effect. To live, and learn, and move, and breathe– is to live. And the only thing I could ever regret, is committing myself to not living.

I love my stories of failure, of missed opportunities, as much as I love my stories of success. I simply love my stories, per se. They are what brought me to current-day, like a road-map with circled towns along the path from beginning to end, hiccups, stutters, falters, breaks. They dot the lining of my life. Same with my tattoos: regardless of the content, regardless of my association with them, they are the signposts of my life, the Post-It notes with instructions of where I’ve been, where I’m going, and where I currently am. They let me know that I have lived a life, rather than let one walk right past me.

Decisiveness implies an ability to pull the trigger and make a decision, even when it’s not fun. A decision made leads to an effect, which then requires another decision to be made. Like a complex math problem, life is a series of these decisions that leads one from the variables to a final summation or end product, where one can lie back and smile: no embarrassment of the past, no regrets of missed opportunities, and no fear of future endeavors. A true living-in-the-moment orientation, with brief reference to past and future, reference to either side of the time-line, and the primary emotions filling one’s day: joy, and eagerness, and excitement, and anticipation for future joy– and of course, when looking backwards, a certain pride and fondness for all past decisions, without pain, or fear, or regret.

-David A. Johnston