let go of my regrets

So, I’m driving around, doing errands, and seeing things that remind me of things. I think of a few instances that I wish I had done differently. Then, suddenly, I laughed out loud, out of a kind of relief. A relief that I wasn’t in that situation any more and that likely if I were in that situation again, I would indeed now do it differently.

What’s the saying? I did the best I could, knowing what I knew. When I knew more, I did better.

I remember reading once in a Paul McWilliams book (LIFE 101, I think) that “You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want.”

Regret is also about choosing, and in this case, not liking your choice. The thing with regret is you don’t feel like you can change the choice, a choice you didn’t like. Regret only really stings when the choice was permanent.

But I’m beginning to be OK with the idea that although I made a choice that was regretful, I am now where I am because of it. Any one change could have changed everything. At the moment, I’m satisfied where I am at. There are many good things where I am, things that I know for certain that would not be in place had I made a different decision two years back.

I am working on taking fuller responsibility, too, for where I am at. I’m trying to understand that the choice I made was for an important reason. Maybe I don’t know exactly the full impact of the reason, but its many variations are becoming clearer to me. I do know for certain I believe I made a choice that gave me an opportunity for yet a different experience and a more honest one. It’s the big view.

Recently I’ve been seeing some personal regrets more abstractly. Yes, they happened to me. Yes, they are painful. Recently, though, I’ve been more non-judgmental of them. When I think of them, I don’t engage them, I simply observe them, something like when meditating and you observe your thoughts as they come, but let them go.

It has made me more aware that my life is personal but at the same time universal.

Does letting go of my regrets allow me to be happy where I am or does being happy where I am prompt me to let go of my regrets?

There is a single regret that haunts me, and has haunted me for two years. That’s a lot of regret.

I don’t want to hang on to it, to have it be a lifelong companion.

I want to deliberately and definitively let go of this regret. To do that will mean recognizing the moments I experience it and to have a counter-attack.

I know that every bad thing I have done or gone through has only shaped and forged me into the person I am now, but I still wish that I could have become better through some happier life lesson.

I regret the things that I didn’t do. I regret the way I’ve become so bitter and distrustful. I regret tending the bad relationships and letting the good, healthy ones dry up and die. I regret not catching on sooner. I regret not taking Sciences in High School so that I could be a Bio major now. I regret loving him so much and knowing we’d be together forever (and selling my furniture because of this) only o have him change his mind.

These regrets swim through my mind. They are part of what I am. I have to let go of a part of myself even though I am still weak from giving too much of myself to people who only tossed those pieces aside.

that i left my journals in public places for others to find (like bookcrossing but much more personal). Then I became panicked and felt a strong desire to try and find them all. I was afraid of someone taking them but also of the journals being ignored or thrown out.

Then I woke up….

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of actually doing this now.

not turn back time…

is fixing my mistakes. But what about the mistakes I can’t fix?... I hate myself for making them and for not doing anything.

It’s not worth the energy to have regrets. Learn and move on.