Ruing the Day

An observation veiled in a question came up over drinks in NYC the other day - how many times have you rued the day? As with so many other male introspections it came up over a baseball game, Barry Zito's (and the San Francisco Giant's) 3-0 blanking of the Mets to be specific, and in direct response to the statement that George Steinbrenner might be ruing the day he passed on Carlos Beltran.

(Immediately after this, I was threatened for the first time in my life for hating the Yankees, which admittedly I've done for a long time, but in no way to the serious or even active extent that I thought it might become someone's particular conflict with me. In sum, I hate the Yankees in the general, lazy way someone might hate France for being France, or the US for being Awesome!)

So, to all the Mr. Steinbrenners out there, are you ruing any particular days in your life?

It was more of a general question.

Cody said it wasn't so much one single day or single moment he's ruing, so much as a generalized rue, more like ruing whole periods of his life - like certain semesters in college (perhaps college as a liminal phase itself) or phases spent with a certain, ill-chosen significant other. Maybe you're ruing the person - a real mean bitch or some fucking asshole who dragged you down for as long as you were foolish enough to be wasting your time with them.

Rue isn't something you waste on a small decision, usually the kind of decision that exceeds the scope of a single day, usually the kind of decision that is actually a whole sump of decisions like the choices so small we don't even see them as choices so much as the way we choose to live our lives in the day to day. That's the thing we might come to rue.