The Regrets We Carry

"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."— Victoria Holt

If I could speak to my 21-year-old self, oh the things I would say to him!

Eat better.

Exercise more.

Study harder.

Save more money.

Travel more.

Take more calculated risks. Calculated being the key word.

And above all, do not be afraid.

I would tell him, it is going to be alright. The OCD thoughts he is having will eventually go away. He will graduate. He will find a job. He will meet “that” girl – and I did! The girl especially.

But then I remember: if I had gone down a different path, I may not have ended where I am at now – with the wife and children I love more than myself.

We all have regrets. Some people say they don't, but I suspect they do. Life throws too many curveballs not to have any. Maybe a different major, or a different job, would have given us more financial freedom. Maybe moving our young children to a different state - trading their grandparents' front porch for a better school district and a wider world - cost us something we didn't know we were spending. Maybe the time away from home, chasing the job that paid more, bought a security that wasn't worth what it took to get it.

Regret is a strange companion. It whispers that life would have been better if only we'd turned left instead of right, accepted one job instead of another, married someone else, moved away, stayed put, spoken up, or remained silent. The problem is that regret only imagines the lives we didn't live. It never imagines what they might have cost us.

Here's my point: you don't know what would have changed. You never will. You have to accept where you are and make the most of the hand you were dealt with, and the cards you decided to play anyway.

Luck plays a larger role in our lives than most of us care to admit. Sinatra sang it best, in a line Paul Anka gave him: regrets, I've had a few. But even the most charming lives carry some.

Regret isn't designed to punish us. It's here to teach us that perfection was never on offer - not for anyone, not for any life. That isn't a tragedy. It's just the truth of the thing. And once you know it, you stop asking your life to be perfect, and you start asking it to be yours.

I've learned that regret often comes from assuming we were supposed to make the perfect decision. But there was never a perfect decision. There were only imperfect people doing the best they could with the information they had at the time. I try to remember that when I judge the younger version of myself too harshly. He didn't know what I know now.

That's the part I'd want my 21-year-old self to hear most of all. Not that the OCD would fade, or the job would come, or the girl would say yes - though she did. Just that the life waiting for him wasn't the one he was picturing. It was better, in ways he had no way of picturing yet.