Forget regret or life is yours to miss

When asked about regrets, I usually say that I have none.* Throughout my 28 years I’ve generally been true to myself and pursued what I love, and that’s something to be grateful for. I honestly don’t have that many regrets, and I’m thankful to be able to say that.

However… this morning I woke up with “What You Own” from Rent stuck in my head, and it reminded me of an old regret.

I was a junior or senior in high school, leaving the speech and debate classroom. In the hallway wall, the teacher liked to post ticket stubs of shows she’d gone to. I was looking at them and spotted a Rent stub. I said excitedly, “Oooh, you’ve seen Rent! How was it?”

She said that technically it was very good, and she went on a little about acting and lighting and such. I nodded eagerly.

She went on, “But I don’t like that it uses this beautiful music to make you sympathize with these kinds of people. You know what I mean?”

I felt like she’d hit me, but I kept nodding, and even smiled and made understanding noises.

I don’t know what she meant by “these kinds of people.” Did she mean gays? Junkies? Homeless people? Poor artists? Blacks? New Yorkers? People who don’t know what they want from life? I have no idea, but it’s not surprising the teacher felt this way about the show. She is a proud Southerner (Louisiana) and so conservative she wouldn’t let us say “shit” in interpretive speeches, even if that’s what was in the script. We all knew this and joked about it. But she is also a superstar in her world, the axis and driving force of the school’s speech and debate program, and well-known to generations of students, teachers, and parents both at our school and at competing schools. It’s also well-known that she’s always had favorites among the students. She learns everybody’s name and is nice to everyone, but the favorites get all kinds of love and attention she doesn’t have time to give to the others. I rarely placed in tournaments and never won an event. I wasn’t one of her favorites, but many of my friends were, and I would have liked to be.

This little talk about Rent was one of the longest conversations I’d ever had alone with this teacher, and I felt pleased to be in her attention. I didn’t want to jeopardize that by speaking up, so I pretended I agreed with her. I wanted to ask, “What do you mean, ‘these kinds of people’?” I wanted to say, “I don’t agree with you and I don’t even like what you’re saying.” If it happened again now, I might remark, “But that’s the power of music, that it can make you care about people you wouldn’t normally think about.” But I said none of these things, and undoubtedly the incident has long passed from the teacher’s memory. Not from mine. I walked home that day wishing I’d said what I felt, and it kept bothering me all evening. It still bothers me. I compromised my integrity to make someone like me more, and I’ve always regretted it. Clearly I regret that I didn’t speak my mind, but even more, I regret that my silence came so naturally. I regret that I spent so many years as the kind of person who would swallow my own opinions rather than give others a reason to think less of me.

It’s still something I work on, as you regular readers know: caring less what others might think, being more true to myself in speech as well as thought and action. Maybe I wouldn’t strive so hard for this if I didn’t have memories like this to remind me of times when I stayed quiet and agreeable — and writhed inside to do it. Regrets can be good sometimes, when they remind us of how we want to change.

*Well, I was once offered an opportunity to be flown to the Utah desert to be photographed naked in body paint with other dancers. I’m not making this up. I didn’t go, and I never found out how it turned out. I seriously regret it.