‘if only I had my life to live all over again, I sure would do things differently’. Have you ever wistfully said that to yourself? If you have not, congratulations my friend!
What if you were given the chance to live your life all over again? Given this chance, would you as a mature adult, do it?
Before you answer, just consider that, along with all your mistakes, heartaches, and missed opportunities that will be wiped away, all your successes, joys, friendships, relations and professional accomplishments will also be lost. Would you still do it? Maybe, maybe not.
What about taking back small fragments of your life like words that you said to someone or turned down a job opportunity or failed to call an old friend? If you could add up all these regrettable small actions and change them to better ones, would your life be happier?
The trouble with this selective editing of one’s life is that it allows you to correct your life course but without a guarantee that the re-defined course would, in the long run, be better for you. As an example, it was as a result of a series of seemingly ill-judged decisions, over a period of six months after graduation, that led me to take up a job in London, where soon after, I met my future wife with whom I had three wonderful children. Further, although that first job was not right for me at the time, it formed the foundation to my entire professional career.
Clearly, I am not talking about catastrophic decisions or things we say that end up having profoundly destructive consequences like getting killed or imprisoned for the rest of one’s life. I only refer to those seemingly inconsequential decisions, actions and utterances that we soon come to regret and beat ourselves up for years after. We may try and make amends by apologising or putting corrective actions but, we still don’t seem to shake off that terrible sense of regret.
Regret comes in two sizes. Normal size regret is when you realise you made a mistake and regret it because you know exactly where you went wrong and what would have been a better course of action, or a better set of words to have said. Super-sized regret is when you say or do something that results in a negative outcome and you just cannot think how you might have dealt with the matter differently. This type of regrettable outcome, more than any other, remains with me for a long time and I hate it with passion.
The song My Way, made famous by Frank Sinatra has always irritated me because of the overall self-satisfied attitude of the lyrics but, the one line that really gets under my skin is the one that says: “Regrets, I have had a few but then again, too few to mention”. Well, lucky you, Frank!
So, would I like to change my life totally or partially?
Without doubt, I would like to erase small segments of my life, mostly single decisions, actions, or uttered words that had significant consequences on my life like terminating a relation that I cared about more than I thought I had, or impacted my career negatively.
On the whole however, even with maturity and knowing what I know now, I really doubt that I would manage my life any better. So, I would leave things as they are, thank you very much. I just wish I could get rid of that unpleasant companion called ‘Regret’.
Here is a French proverb: The first half of life is spent in longing for the second, the second half in regretting the first.
