Have you ever heard someone say, "I have no regrets?"  It sounds like the kind of phrase that should be uttered by a 14-year-old girl, only it's used by 34-year-olds.  Who was the first person to say this phrase?  Why did it catch on?  Most importantly, why is it so wrong to regret something?

After all, isn't a regret just a mistake you wish you didn't make?  It's funny how the phrases we've been programmed to say reveal how little we think about the words that come out of our mouths. The same people who say, "I have no regrets," also have probably said, "Everyone learns from their mistakes!"  How can you acknowledge that you've learned from your mistakes but you don't have any regrets?  If you made a mistake and you learned from it, I'm sorry, but that mistake was a regret.  A regret that fueled you in a positive way, I might add.

I suspect that people do not want to be associated with the word "regret" because it has a pronounced negative connotation.  For example, if a woman admitted that she regretted breaking up with her boyfriend, the image we might have of her is one of spending sleepless, tear-filled nights with her pillow.  "What a loser," we will think.  But we all have regrets; I have yet to meet the person who has never played back a particular event in their mind and wish they had resolved it differently.

All of this is to warn against the dangers of reflexively spouting out bullshit because you were programmed to do so.  Okay?  What up, bitches?

Why Feed The Pigeons?

This afternoon, I was trying to exit Marine Park on the paved road that leads back to the street, only to find that my path was obstructed by a blockade of pigeons.  A middle-aged woman was feeding them bread.  I didn't want to risk being shit on by the birds, or even touching them, and so I went around them, being forced to stomp on several blades of grass in the process.

Now, I don't like to get judgmental about how people spend their free time, but I will do so here.  If you have nothing better to do than to feed bread to birds, you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.  We live in an age, I think, where it is impossible to be bored at home.  There's so much to do in the world, but for that subculture of people who like to disrupt the food chain, the world has passed them by.

This episode reminded me of the Avenue U train station in Brooklyn, where on most mornings, a person has placed a bag of bread on one of the stairway landings to which pigeons naturally flock.  Small wonder that the station is coated with bird shit.  It's not enough that people on the way to work or school have to deal with the stress of their daily routine; they have to worry about getting their clothes soiled because some old fart whose closest thing to a business meeting is watching The Price Is Right has nothing better to do than to feed the birds.

And somehow, I think that desire of certain people to feed birds is less rooted in concern for the winged creatures' hunger than it is the need to satisfy the hunger of the people's ego.  Birds were doing just fine before we showed up and gave them Wonder Bread.  Not that I'm an ecological expert, but I would argue that we are disrupting the balance of the food chain when we give birds bread.  Animals that birds would naturally eat (insects, worms, etc.) probably go untouched when we allow our feathered friends to fill up on bread, although I've never seen any animal reject food when presented with it.

All of this is to ask the question, Why must all of our actions prove or confirm our existence?  Why can't people just stay in and watch a good TV show rather than interfere with the natural lives of undomesticated birds?  

This may seem unrelated, but people shop, shop, and shop, but buy things that they really don't need.  I suspect that if you asked people individually, they would admit that a large percentage of the stuff they buy, they don't need or don't use.  So why do people do it?  I would argue that shopping is one of the few activities that proves that we exist to society at large.  We go to a store, we are seen by people.  We pay by credit and we get a receipt with our name on it.  Many stores have security cameras that watch us.  Commerce proves that we exist, even though it may be damaging to our wallets.   The act of staying at home and watching a good movie might be more satisfying personally and less strenuous on the wallet, but who is there to see you do it?

But I'll bet if we did more interesting, satisfying things than feed birds and shop for things we don't need, we'd lead more interesting, satisfying lives.