What do you regret or long to have done differently? Life? Relationships? Decision-making? Mistakes you keep making? Realities you can’t buck? Is there a status-quo you keep facing you wish you didn’t? One carries on and makes do still there’s unfinished business. What’s yours?
I have a ton of multiverse splitting events in my life:
What if I had gone to post-secondary school?
What if I had paid more attention to what was happening around me when a friend and my Ex started cheating on me?
What if I kept playing and/or refereeing Soccer?
What if I had gone for a job opportunity that could have made me a lot of money, but my life would had potentially at risk?
What if I choose Coke over Pepsi?
The long and short of it is, that any of those choices may have made my life better, or maybe worse. Who knows. But the simple fact is, for all the pitfalls and problems i’ve had and some i still face today, I do like the life i’ve fallen into, and I’ve way too much to think about how to maintain it, than what could have made it different.
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Fair enough. Everyone’s burden isn’t the same. Your read and take of a scenario says as much on you as anything. For some, thinking back is punishment and another a gift. Staying in the here and now or as Qui-Gon Jinn cautioned paying attention to the living force is ideal. Then again history is subtext and one always carries what was with them in some form. It’s inevitable. Akin to taxes, we pay for the past, present, and what we conceive as the future. We’re culpable whether we’re aware of it or not and we roll in whatever works best for us.
Fear is the mindkiller, but regrets are not far behind.
It might be a little fun to play “what if?” but it can only become destructive if the game turns into a routine, a spiral. It leads to second-guessing and then second-guessing at the moment decisions need to be made.
Live our best lives possible. Choose, and then own that choice. Enjoy the ride that follows; don’t look back at “what if?” because you’ll miss the incredible view before you. If mistakes are made, that’s an opportunity for growth and not catastrophic failure.
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Also some failure is not entirely your own. Some people won’t change whether it’s you, somebody else, or anybody. Accepting the verdict is immovable regardless what you do shrinks feeling responsible when you don’t need to. As with anything, it’s a matter of proportion which goes with anything. Confidence is much of it. Feeling secure in your own skin helps enjoying the ride. If there’s a spring piercing your rear when seated, it might be harder to stay focused on the road.
No regrets, times arrow moves in one direction, there is no now, just what comes next.
But yeah, I wish I had transitioned earlier.
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Without being overly specific…
I should have chosen friends/allies more carefully. “I like you because you like me” is fine in the First Grade. As you get older, it’s of more limited utility.
I should have not been so quick to believe that someone respected or cared about me just because they said they did. This is twice as true in the social media era as it was before. A lot of people who shout to the skies about how evolved they are turn out to be people who’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks the minute you question any assertion they make. See also: people who swear up and down they’ll have your back, but when the time comes?
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