I Regret Having Regrets

I’ve been thinking a lot about my life and about regrets I have and things of that nature recently. I remember lying in bed one night really late after the World Cup game had finished and I began thinking about my life, and what I would do differently if I could go back and do it all again. I would go back to the beginning of Grade 8, before everything went all wrong. I’d make minor adjustments in grade 8, because it wasn’t too bad. I’d focus more on making friends and I’d strengthen my existing friendships. I’d train hard and really put effort into my goalkeeping and I’d work hard at school.

Grade 9 would be more of the same; particularly focusing on soccer and schoolwork. In Grade 10 I would.... and it goes on. I would have left school with an OP3, deferred for a year then studied psychology for a year, then worked for half a year and then gone to America with my sister. That was the grand plan I thought up in bed that night. I must admit, it sounds cool. Everything that is my life now would not exist, and soon I’d be jettisoning off to America to chase my dreams.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone like that. Not even close. I’m twenty, work a casual job, have a thousand dollars to my name and no prospects. I’ve dropped out of uni twice and now, as I write have no idea what I want to do with my life. But that is not the point. Despite how much I may or may not have screwed up what my life could have been like, I can’t change that. It’s gone. And whether or not it affects me is totally up to me. I found this sweet quote by Fulton Oursler which says, “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.” They work hand in hand, if you fear the future then you’ll regret the past. It is like dying a slow and painful death of insignificance and mediocrity. I was dying that death.

It’s been said that “if only” is the saddest pair of words known to man. I’d tend to agree. What can be said of the man who, in self pity looks back at what he can’t change and utters the words, ‘if only I did this or didn’t do that’, and neglects his present position and the future he may have if he was willing to put all his energy into it? I used to be that man, even perhaps, I still am. I am watching my life pass me by, all the while wondering what could have been if only I put in the work when it was needed. I’ll never know. However what I do know is, I’ll only ever add to my ‘could’ve beens’ unless I shift my focus to what is to come instead of what has already been.

I so don’t want to be the pitiful, depressed loser who gets to the end of his life and all he has is regrets. I don’t want to be the one who had dreams and never even chased them. I don’t want to be the one who was crippled by fear and plagued with regrets. I just don’t want to be a failure. And that’s determined by how I live my life not by how it could have gone if only....

It’s got to start here; life is what I make it.