okay, let's be honest...
you know those people who, when asked what they would change about their lives if they could go back in time and do it all over again, immediately answer with, “i wouldn’t change anything! i’d do everything exactly the same!”?
i want to smack those people.
because i don't think they're being completely honest.
i believe there are precious few among us who are so enlightened or evolved or saturated with contentment that they have absolutely nothing in their past they’d want to alter or tweak or enhance or outright delete. for everyone else, i suspect there’s at least one thing, if not dozens – be they major or insignificant – that they’d change if they could.
a bad decision.
a wrong turn.
a poor choice.
a lost opportunity.
a forgotten dream.
a hurtful memory.
a broken heart.
a stubbed toe.
a cootie-laden shrimp cocktail.
a manila-envelope paper cut.
whatever.
something.
i know that regret is a wasted emotion, and that every action precipitates countless subsequent events (the butterfly and the tsunami, if you will), and that changing one thing can, in the end, change everything... not necessarily for the better. i get that. i know that the sum of our life experience, good or bad or otherwise, makes us who we are today, and i suppose if you totally love your life as it is you wouldn't want to risk tinkering with any of the variables, no matter how small, that got you there. understandable. and, i dunno, maybe it's considered weak or foolish or selfish to admit you'd want to change anything about the hand you've been dealt.
but, sometimes, when i think about my life, the points where i made mistakes or missteps or picked the wrong tine at the fork in the road, the moments when i hurt someone or lost something... they shout at me from my memory. or shove me until i trip and fall. or sneak up on me in the dark to see if they can make me cry, like merciless taunts from a stealth gang of schoolyard bullies.
and i can't help but think that being able to go back to change even a few of them wouldn't be such a terrible thing.
6 comments:
I agree. There's a thing or too, but I've abandoned all regrets and just live a day at a time now.
(or i try too) ;¬)
(((Vic)))
two
I actually have a list of "too", as in "I'd change this, and I'd change that too." :-)
There are certainly a few things I'd change including -- but not limited to -- stubbed toes and bumped foreheads.
But for the bigger ones, the "I wish I'd chosen to..." regrets, it's not just that they shaped who I am now but that those decisions reflected who I was at the time. As much as I might realize it could have been great if I'd made a different choice, it's not fair to expect the past me to know or feel what I do now.
I suppose it helps that I'm pretty precise in my decision-making. But even with those choices that clearly didn't work out as hoped, I can still understand my reasons for making them, and recognize whatever it was that held me back from choosing back then what I might now wish I'd chosen.
Oh man, I so agree with Matt on this one. Who I was is not who I am, so it is unfair of the who I am now to judge or regret the decisions that the who I was once made. And you know what? If I let that kind of regret go on, there will come a me who is another 5 years wiser who will judge and regret the one who I am right now. Geez. I don't want me turning on me. I do the best I can.
And so do you.
solid point, matt and lou. i've never framed it that way before -- that i've changed, so the choices i'd make now would also be different than those i made in the past.
thanks for that.
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