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Today's column is not about football despite the immediate mention of University of Utah cornerback Dominique Hatfield. I don't follow sports and have never once seen him play … hmm, whatever it is he plays. Football, right?

I would have never heard of Dominique Hatfield and his marvelous potential as an athlete if he hadn't been arrested last week for aggravated robbery.

To be fair (if not exactly clear), alleged cops allege Hatfield allegedly robbed an alleged man of $180, allegedly at knife point.

Since I wasn't the guy who got robbed, I have no idea if Hatfield is guilty. I'm more interested in the public reaction to his lost potential.

Sports fans are confused. It seems inconceivable to everyone that a highly talented kid with a bright future would throw it all away for a trifling bit of cash. If he goes to prison, likely his potential career as a sports god is over.

He could well spend the rest of his life mired in regret over the loss of his one shot at fame and fortune. This could well be a defining moment for the rest of his life.

Self-recriminatory and defeatist thoughts will come at inopportune moments. He'll be digging a ditch somewhere or holding his kid and suddenly think, "Damn! How could I have screwed that up?"

I know because I've done it myself. I frequently wonder where I would be today if I hadn't poured several gallons of gas into the front seat of a nice car and tossed in a match.

I try to cheer myself up by wondering if the owner ever ponders where his life would be today if he hadn't routinely bullied smaller high school kids, particularly one with no qualms against setting someone's uninsured ride on fire.

You've done it, too. Not arson or armed robbery, perhaps. But with the exception of sociopaths and some Republicans, everyone has a moment in their past that they still regret. It's very human.

Disappointing other people isn't good, but it can be terrible when we disappoint ourselves. When it comes to living down a stupid act, the hardest person to get forgiveness from is the idiot who did it.

Other animals don't do this. If a tiger chews the head off a nun, he doesn't spend the rest of his life wishing he hadn't done that. If anything, he remembers how easy it was and goes shopping for another. Hell, he's a tiger.

It's humans that can't let go of stuff. Do you regret the decision to marry the wrong person? What if you married the right person but did something stupid and lost them?

Maybe you alienated your family, or stood too close to an explosion. Perhaps you wish you'd been nicer to your kids, or a little less inquisitive about drugs. It doesn't even have to be anything really bad for regret to become a defining moment. Maybe you said something thoughtless that devastated a loved one's feelings, or even just told some self-righteous prig at church to go #*&%$ himself.

Yeah, even little things like that can have lasting consequences. The point isn't whether human beings have regrets, but rather how we deal with them.

If Hatfield threw away a great education and a shot at the pros, it doesn't have to ruin him. It might, though. He could still have a great life — provided at some point he forgives himself.

Self-recrimination isn't entirely bad. If you're happy with your life right now, regret is at least one of the things that helped get you there.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com.