What is your biggest regret? This is a question that was posed in a social experiment. A blackboard was erected on a sidewalk in the middle of New York City where this uncomfortable question was written. Passersby were given the opportunity to answer it by writing a short response on the board.
The question touches a nerve in many people, because most human beings have some regrets; interestingly, many who passed this blackboard that posed this question, felt the need to unburden themselves.
Regrets about the big choices in life are sometimes hard to pinpoint; are we regretful because we fell short in a relationship?; do we regret not having reached a goal?; are our regrets truly our own, or are they about not having reached someone else’s expectations of us?
There is a Robert Frost poem titled, “The Road Not Taken”; the most famous quote from it is: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, … I took one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” This line seems particularly apropos for this experiment. When people wrote on the blackboard about their regrets there was one dominant word that stood out, and that was NOT.
Many seem so broken from the “NOTS” in their life. People who wrote their regrets, came back some time later to see something new written on the board, that turned on a metaphorical light. Watch the video below to see the process of the experiment and the message of hope that is brought home. Let us know what you think about this message.
Source – Sungazing.com
The clip, produced by A Plus, shows the board hung up on a fence outside Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino Park in Brooklyn, New York City
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