Something about regret

Slowly, slowly, I'm sorting through the leftovers from the Center's latest garage sale and deciding what to keep and what to give to Goodwill. This morning I came across a little paperpack book entitled The Joy of Being Human by Eugene Kennedy. Here's a short passage that caught my attention:

Beware if you find that you are blaming other persons for your own difficulties in life. This may be the chief sign by which to diagnose an imminent case of personal regret. The individual who continually justifies his or her own lack of initiative by accusing everyone of duplicity or bad faith in not giving the recognition he or she deserves is almost certainly going to end up bitter and regretful. This is not to say that injustice does not exist; it is to point to a pattern of passivity which puts the burden for our success or achievement on others rather than on ourselves.

Personally, I think this tends to happen because we've been socialized (at least in the U.S.) to believe that, if anything bad happens, someone has to be to blame. It's utterly demoralizing always to blame oneself and so people tend to look for someone else to blame. What would happen if we simply let go of the concept of blame as such altogether? Perhaps establishing blame is helpful from a legal point of view but it rarely supports our ability to heal and get on with our lives.