Your own regrets may not be as ugly as you think they are.
The kinds of things that we can make mistakes about are essentially unlimited in number.
I had drunk our great cultural Kool-Aid about regret, which is that lamenting things that occurred in the past is an absolute waste of time, that we should always look forward and not backward, and that one of the noblest and best things we can do is strive to live a life free of regrets.
I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.
If you Google 'regret and tattoo,' you will get 11.5 million hits.
