VIVERE SENZA RIMPIANTI

I stopped off at the baguette shop on the way to work this morning. I think it's called La Baguette - from the French for 'The Baguette'.

I know - it's a wonder I haven't been recruited as a translator at the UN, with those kind of skills.

Anyway, speaking of translation, I happened to notice this morning, that one of the girls who works there has a tattoo, inked in Italian.

'Vivere Senza Rimpianti' it said in cursive writing across her shoulders. It means 'Live without regrets'.

Yeah man, don't spend your time wallowing in the past with those mistakes that got you down, live for the moment and don't take no nonsense from no-one innit.

I thought about it though, as I stood there cradling a five pound note. I think I need my regrets! Life without them? They're like milestones in my history that point me towards something better in the future. Without them, how will I know what went wrong or why?

Living without regrets would be like blunderbussing your way through every relationship, not really caring about who gets hurt or why, not understanding or perhaps even believing that you're capable of making a mistake! Who wants that? Seems like a fast-track to a lonely life to me.

Vivere Senza Rimpianti, indeed. And anyway, is it even possible? I mean even if you could live a perfect life, free of regret, remorse or disappointment, there are still things that happen outside of your control that are horribly regretful.

What's more there are also things that happen that actually could have been prevented... by you.

I gulped. That's the truth for me. There are things happening that I could have done something about. If I were living a life free from regret, it'd be easy for me to shrug them off, say 'oh well' and move on to the next thing. I may well have learned entirely nothing.

I think regret is designed to do something - to make you change, to help you see that there might be a better way. I agree that you can go too far and spend your whole time living in the past and getting depressed about the things that you regret. But you don't have to. You don't have to stay there.

Well, anyway I didn't say any of that in the middle of La Baguette. I did wonder though if the girl would wake up in thirty or forty years time and regret having those words imprinted into her skin. But there are more important things to regret than tattoos.

A few moments later, another girl breezed in. She strode past me, silently and walked through to the back without a word. Then, she emerged wearing an apron and started to pull on a couple of plastic gloves. None of the girls working there said anything to her - they just stood there in the corner, chatting by the blackboards under their breath. I looked at the girl who'd just come in. Her expression told me that she would rather be anywhere else and her eyes glistened with tears.

I looked back at the girl with the tattoo and wondered whether even she, lei vive senza rimpianti, would make it to the end of the day without a regret or two.