People frequently regret the past and the choices they've made or failed to make. There's the famous Wayne Gretzky line, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take." And there's Mike Tyson's "everyone has a plan until they get punched on the mouth." You don't have to believe in God or the notions that everything is as it's supposed to be or it would be different to accept a deterministic universe. Free will is an illusion if one considers heredity, environment, DNA. In fact even so-called aleatory or chance phenomena follow built-in laws. You may be playing roulette or even Russian roulette but what time of day it is and where you are in space/time are some of the forces already at work. The Gambler is the title of a Dostoevsky novel and Dostoevsky himself was a gambler but is one ever gambling? The great Russian writer experienced a mock execution. After such a hair-raising experience anyone would be forced to concede to fate. There's actually no second guessing or turning back, no life that would have been. The only life you can have is the one you're living.
listen to "Do the Funky Chicken" by Rufus Thomas
read the review of The Kafka Studies Department in Booklife (PW)
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