Regrets

Some people say there are no mistakes in life. That no matter what occurs, things happen for a reason. While there may be some truth in that, it's not always easy to accept what takes place unexpectedly, tragically, as being what needs to. With the right state of mind though it is possible to accept things and find positivity, even when things seem overtly negative initially, so that at some point it all makes sense and you come to feel better about what took place; to know that you wouldn't be where you are now without having gone through it, especially if you now feel that is where you want to be.

I've had that happen several times, as I suspect you have, but I've also felt regret at having made certain decisions which I know I didn’t have to make, which somehow remain with me no matter how much I accept that I did. I can’t know what would have taken place had I not made those decisions, but I still find it difficult to reconcile how much my life changed as a result.

When you've lived through enough, even though I see why many choices were necessary, after enough time has gone by, it becomes harder to remember the thoughts and feelings which made those decisions seem like the right ones. Dwelling too much on the past does not always help, but a little dwelling is a way to understand where I am in the present. We can't go back and do it again, we can only learn not to make similar choices in the future, but I do find myself wondering what life would have been like had I chosen this instead of that, turned left instead of right, stayed instead of gone, left instead of stayed.

Some say we live in a multi-verse of parallel realities and every possibility exists in some form on some level. It's interesting to think that but I only know what I experience and I only experience myself in the present.

In many ways all the circumstances that occur are intrinsically neutral; it is we who impart positivity or negativity to them based on our beliefs. As life goes on we often change those beliefs and what was once felt to be positive/negative is no longer felt so.

It’s easy to doubt what happens, only to discover how right life actually is, how what took place brings us to where we are, where we might never have come anywhere near had it not occurred that way. But there is a difference in accepting what just seems to happen and having made a choice one didn’t have to make.

My life has brought me to where everything is about to change in an unknown and uncertain way, and all I can do is walk towards it as best I can, attempting not to fear, not to worry, that it won't take me where I need to go. I don't know where I need to go, I only know I am going somewhere else, and I need to let go of regrets, even though it is easy to have them when you know it is the result of your own choices. Which I suppose is what life is; the result of our choices, and if we’re lucky, we get to have a real say in what those choices are. We have to accept the ones we regret though, but no matter what takes place, everything always changes, and one day we might come to understand why.

 

Yes. It has been a while.

I appreciate your reply, your words have a certain...familiarity. Like putting on an old pair of shoes left in the back of the wardrobe and remembering how comfortable they were. Perhaps that is why you were the one to respond and why it seemed like I was talking directly to you.

I’m not sure about having the same message, or even if I have a message. That door may have quietly closed. But we know a door often has to close in order to find another ready to open. To recognise a door as a door after not always noticing it was there, and perhaps discover it was the right one to walk through all along.

Regrets can create melancholy, not always de-pression but hopefully a more useful com-pression. A chance to re-evaluate, put life into perspective, recognise what matters and let go of what doesn’t. I have focused on too many things that didn’t matter, and as a result life has dealt me a different kind of hand in order to help me understand.

Nice.

 

Are you saying there are some things you just can't or will not learn?

If you know you are doing wrong things but continue doing them, isn't that a choice?

 

I think there’s a difference between making a mistake, getting things wrong and learning, and having regrets about what took place.

Regrets are a strange thing to live with because I know that I can’t go back and do it again, and really there should be nothing to regret because everything is about learning.

And yet when I look at it closely, I don’t think I would go back. I wouldn’t want to return to that time where I felt what I felt, did what I did and left when I left. So the regret, at least in my case, is simply about where I am now.

A feeling, an anxiety, about the future, an uncertainty about what comes next.

So this thing I call regret is different, because even though I did what I felt I had to do, if I had known where I would be as a result, I might have chosen not to, and I’m sure that would’ve been a mistake.

So perhaps this is not regret because I’ve made mistakes, done things that I might have done differently had I understood, I accept those as being the way life had to go for me to learn and grow and become who I am. This seems different.

TBC