Thursday, November 5, 2009

Regrets

We've all heard it:  "Live life with no regrets".  I'm not sure how that's even possible.  I, personally, have a laundry list of regrets.

Most of them are small -  I should have gone away to college.  Done the whole "college" thing.  Worked less, played more.  I wish I had worn a "real" wedding dress when Dave and I got married.  Stuff like that.

You get the picture.

But some of them are HUGE - People I've hurt.  Choices I've made.  Paths I've chosen.

Obviously there are a slew of things I DON'T regret.  Blessings in my life that I am forever grateful for.  Many of which would not BE if not for the path my life has taken.  But to live life without any regrets?!?  I'm still figuring that one out.  If anyone has a magic formula for that one, let me know.

1 comment:

Matt said...

Regret often involves looking back at our past actions. At those moments of the past though, our actions were choices that were made. Some of those choices seem more like they are dictated to us. There is a saying that hindsight is always 20-20, well I think that is true to an extent. I think we also look at the past from our perspective of the present, and that influences how we look at it. Sometimes we see where we "could/would/should" have done something differently, but we are making that judgement from a different point in time. How we acted or didn't act, the choices we made or did not make, we can't go back and change them. In fact, we wouldn't be in the position to ask if we hadn't followed the path of our life. A metaphor may be this: Life ahead of us is a series of paths branching off in different directions, but the path we walked to get to the present is just one path. We think we can look back and see all the branching paths, and wonder if we are on the right path, but we can't see where those other paths might have taken us. Ultimately we need to take the next step forward and not stand still on the path, becuase then nothing will change. When your present life has many blessings, it will help alleviate the feelings of regret to be mindful that it was only the unique path of the past that could lead you to that blessed moment.