Saturday, April 30, 2011

The Thing About Regrets

Stream - Jasper, AB, Canada

I once heard someone say: Don't have any regrets. At the time, every decision you made was yours, it was made by choice and you decided on what was best for you back then.

It was probably not those exact words that I heard, but I remember the meaning, the message.

I thought it was such a nice, and true, thing to say...

But then I realised: What about the decisions we were so unsure about? What about the times we acted on something, already wondering if we'd regret it?


Is it safe to say that in those cases, we're "allowed" to have regrets? Is it OK to wonder: what if?

Sometimes a small decision can change your entire life... if I had listened to my guts instead of listening to my friend, would I still have ended up in England and Australia?

It did seem like a good decision for some time, but now I am tempted to regret it... And what about him? Does he have any regrets? At all?

1 comment:

  1. You're allowed to have regrets. We are gifted with free will, so there is no right or wrong in this world; only a long string of choices made and experiences that are the consequences of these choices. Then you learn, if you are any good.

    So what about "him"? You lost someone on the way? The important thing is: what have you learned? Could you have learned this had you taken another path? How can you be certain your life would have been better then?

    If you're true to yourself, you know you cannot. Something could have gone wrong, and you could've regreted not doing whatever got you to England and Australia.

    Every day, you make choices that affect the rest of your life. Why would you want regret to fill you with fear and self-pity? It's no use, and it's a dangerous self-feeding spiral; if you're already wondering if you're going to regret a decision, anything goes wrong and there you are, regreting, telling yourself you've made a bad choice.

    Ultimately, we all die, and we lose everything here. What else is there to do but to make the most of this life by going forward, following a path with a heart? Do what you want - you can't be wrong if you have the strength to forgive yourself for your failures. And learn.

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