Regret

I find that I've been saying "I can't believe I said that" and "I can't believe I did that" a lot lately. I've engaged in a lot of back-pedaling, a lot of second guessing, a lot of wishing for second chances.

I used to think of myself as someone who didn't have any regrets, or didn't believe in regret. I tried to subscribe to the notion that even bad events are ultimately good for us because every experience is a learning experience and blah blah blah (motivational speaker pop-psychology makes me gag). And it's not that I've been terribly successful at adopting that outlook, but even if I could what good would it do me?

I am where I am right now because of decisions that I've made, just as I always have been. There have been times when I've been quite content with my lot in life. Looking back from those moments, it would appear that the right choices had outweighed the wrong ones, and that I'd scraped up just enough luck to be able to find myself in a happy place. It was easy to dismiss regret in those moments because things had worked out right. And anyway what use do we have for regret when we like where we're at and we've got what we want?

But how can we (I) not be haunted by our (my) decisions, naive and well-intentioned as they may have been, when we've (I've) derailed? How easy is it to go back and pinpoint specific moments where a single decision--one action, one sentence, one word--made differently, might have meant the difference between success and rock bottom? Those moments burn so brightly in my mind that it's often hard to think of anything else.

I'm not even convinced of my ability to learn from mistakes--or to translate lessons learned into actions taken. Last Friday night, I found myself in a crowded, smoky two-car garage. I was charged with but a single task--a task which I failed to execute. If I found myself in that same smoky garage this Friday, would things transpire any differently? It kills me, but I think not.

I was sharing some of these feelings with a friend late last night, and I was issued the following words of wisdom:

you just need to learn to relax, take some deep breaths, recognize the fact that youre a cool, fun, smart awesome person to be around and take it from there, just be confident, cause youre a wonderful person

I end this post with these words for two reasons. The first is that they were very sincere and very heart-felt and I wanted to preserve them because I'm very grateful to this friend for having said them. The second reason is so that anyone reading this who might feel inclined to issue a similar decree can be spared from doing so since, well, I've already heard it.