Damning regrets...

I just finished watching the movie Atonement. It struck a chord in me, not least that it was very touching towards the end. It set me thinking about regrets and mistakes in life. I'm sure most of us have a regret that is so major we keep thinking about it over time and keep wondering how things would have turned out if we had done things differently. I know I have. Maybe nothing as serious as causing a man to go to jail and eventually ending in his death like in the movie, but situations that could have impacted my life so much that would cause it to be altered significantly that it might be so different from how things turned out. There's a line from another movie, The Time Machine: 'You're a man haunted by those two most terrible words, What If?' I do believe that is the case for many people, and why some cannot move on and suffer the terrible weight of guilt upon their shoulders. How do we move on? I do not know, for if it already weighs so heavily then it is not so easily undone. Maybe that's why there's so much sadness and bitterness...