Regrets Spelled Backwards is Sterger
(or Terger Without the “S”)
Regrets spelled backwards is sterger. This is not any word in English. But through Google translate and then dictionary searches, I found that stergar in Romanian can mean a towel that wipes dry or cleans, and sterge is the action of wiping dry or cleaning.
The following article got me to thinking about regrets, both their overall meaning and what regrets I might personally have.
What an amazing project the writer Darren Weir found — a bench asking people to submit what they regretted not saying to loved ones and confidantes. And his above-referenced article was so moving and challenging!
Do you have regrets? If so, what are they? If not, what are reasons you do not have regrets?
My life has a combination times I had no regrets along with other times I wished I could have gone back and changed everything.
For the times I had no regrets, it was not that I did not have moments I was ashamed of or wish I could change. But overall, the decisions I made brought more positive impacts than negative.
I did a lot of things that were crazy and even dumb several years back. I lent a car to a friend multiple times a week so that they could get to work. This meant I had to walk to work myself, but it ensured this friend could get to work to support his family. There was also the phone call I had to make to my wife to see if it would be okay to drive this friend four hours away to Chicago to see a sick relative. My wife and I didn’t get away to travel much ourselves(even though we don’t have kids), and it meant I had to take a sick day from work. But this was the last time my friend got to see their relative who soon passed away. So many of these actions were spur-of-the-moment and maybe even bringing risks, but the positive outcomes made it all worth it.
Other times on my life journey, I have been so distraught by my experiences, the actions of myself or others, and also sometimes devastating outcomes. Some ordeals left me lying in bed burdened by guilt, shame, shock, and fear. I would go to sleep hoping that my waking experience was some sort of nightmare. Or I would pray that I could wake up in the past in order to redo the whole experience once again.
But things never are as bad as they seem. Or at least there are also those unlimited riches and immeasurably stronger positive forces still thriving as well. As I endured through those toughest of times(much of the roughness was of my own doing), I was able to build resilience and also learn new deeper lessons.
My most negative experiences and moments could be transformed into positive stepping stones. After time, I no longer wished to go back in time and change the past(for the most part, at least), because how could I have ever gotten as far as I did if those stepping stones were removed?
I also learned how going back to change the past would have probably helped very little. They say that hindsight is 20/20. Hindsight reminds us even more how little we humans actually know and how little control we have over anything. What exactly would I have done if I’d gone back in time? And would changing things have not opened the door for other possibly worse events?
I may still experience guilt, shame, and regret from these times now and then. But these conditions also parallel with countless positive forces. It is still a process to learn to sift through the aspects of things I had control over and most of the other aspects I could not control.
And then there’s regrets spelled backwards — sterger or terger without the s. Coincidentally, sterge is the similar Romanian word, to wipe out or erase with that stergar being the entity to do so.
One corollary here is forgiveness. Learning to forgive yourself and also learning to forgive others. Though there may still be scars from where the wound has healed, part of forgiveness is wiping away any subsisting blood, sweat, or other lingering components that burden the wound. Another part of forgiveness is the healing. That is part of the continuous journey of life itself.
