For the many years, I’ve been alive, there is little doubt I live with regret. If I take the time to think about my many experiences, I soon start regretting them in some shape or form. I would change every single one of them, from a single word I uttered to the decisions I made at that point in time. If I changed everything I wanted to, then I wouldn’t be where I am presently; I’m not even sure why I feel so sure about that, but I think of it as a ripple effect. Change one thing in the past, and it changes the trajectory of your life. For example, you decide not to wear the same clothes you wore that day, but instead, you choose the first outfit you put on, or any other means you save twenty minutes that day, which allows you to leave earlier and miss the traffic. Seeing as how you missed the traffic, you are able to go to your favourite coffee shop and meet someone new, your life partner, in fact. Perhaps I am overthinking this, and a change of that nature wouldn’t affect your life in such a manner, but it’s something I cannot stop myself from doing.
Even though I agonise over trivial matters that I have no control over. It does not matter, as I can always assure myself that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I made different choices in my past. Whether that is good or bad depends on how I evaluate my current self and circumstance/situation.
If I decide on a positive evaluation, then there is little doubt I wouldn’t change a thing about my past. However, if I have a negative assessment of my past, I would love nothing more than to meddle with my past. Now, which one is it?
OK, I will come clean! I’m in conflict with myself, as I cannot give one or the other. It’s impossible, as I have mixed feelings about my past. Sure, there is much I would love to change, but contrariwise too. However, if I were to make a decision to keep it the same or change it, then I would not change a damn thing. Allow me to explain. Looking at who I am, including how I think, my experiences, meaning, purpose, and the knowledge I’ve acquired, I wouldn’t change anything because if I did, I wouldn’t be who I am today. If I were different to who I am now, I wouldn’t be in my current position. I would never have written everything I have, nor would I have studied the subjects I did in university. You wouldn’t be reading this, and you wouldn’t be taking the course you are now. Even if my past is painful, it’s what I needed to go through to become the person I am today. However, there is a question on my mind that I want to answer.
Would I be better or worse off if I changed the past? I’m sure you already know the answer to the question. I cannot know! It’s impossible for me to know if my life would have been better or worse, even if regret leads me to believe my life would be better off with a few tweaks here and there. It’s untrue. I didn’t live a different life; therefore, I do not know what the outcome of different choices would be in my life. I lead myself by the nose to believe it would be better, but what of everything that occurs after that one singular choice I want to change? Would I continue to make good choices, or would I make an even worse choice than what I made in the past, leading me to live an even worse off life than now? I cannot know this!
As you can see, there is little use in having regret over past choices because wanting to change them doesn’t necessarily lead to a better life, as you cannot know what decisions will have to be made after that specific one, notably if that choice changes the direction of your life. Don’t look to the past with regret, but look at it as a means to learn and make better choices in the present. Personally, I will choose to live my life over again without making a single change to my past. Instead, I elect to make changes in my present so that I have a chance to make my future a little brighter.
Loading ...