Choice and Regret

I wish I paid for parking that day my car got towed. I wish I spent more time with my grandma before she died. I wish I left my marriage in a different and better way. I wish I kept the gifted money I received from my uncle a secret. I wish I didn't take the route I did the evening I wrote off my car.

I wish, I wish, I wish.

The only thing those wishes have in common is that none of them will come true. Those situations can never turn out any differently than they already have. My wishing for things to be different doesn't make it so. The wishing only eats me up inside and makes me depressed.

I regret nothing in my life. The thing with life is that the decisions we make are made because they feel right, they feel good, or because with what we know at the time, that choice makes the most sense and fits who we are in that moment the most succinctly. After we make a decision, life goes on. As life goes on, we experience new things and learn more about ourselves. Growth gives us insight into why our past decisions were poorly made. But we didn't know better, not then.

Regret can cripple you. Regret can prevent you from moving forward because you are stuck in the past and want so badly to turn the clock back. Future growth is severely impeded as a result. You can't accept your new reality because you are hanging on so tightly to your old one, and your present suffers because of it.

I've learned that I need to be at peace with my life and where I've guided it. If I'm not happy with it, I can always change it going forward. But I can never go backward. And... I wouldn't want to. I often look back at a particular point in life and see it with rose-tinted glasses. It's easy to filter out the sadness and the pain and see only the positives. But I remind myself why I made the choice I did: life felt painful. It felt hopeless. Right or wrong, I make decisions so that I can improve the quality of my life.