Releasing Regrets

Facebook has a lot of things to occupy your time--some of them fruitful, much of them inane. In my opinion, the little quotes and funny sayings comprise the best part of Facebook.  Sure, the addicting/time-wasting games provide hours of mindless fun and catching up with high school and college friends both amuses and interests me, but the little nuggets of wisdom or humor I come across on occasion really resonate with me.  I've always been a sucker for a good quote.  I love being able to feel a philosophy or understand a grand idea with in the span of a sentence or two.  As a matter of fact, I used to put a quote a day up on my chalkboard not only for my students to think on but because the quote generally held something for me to ponder as well.

The other day someone posted, "Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted."  For some reason that quote spoke to me.  I liked the honesty of it.  The majority of what we do comes from what we want to do, whether or not we consciously acknowledge that fact. I think that when people look back on their experiences, they attribute blame to circumstances or other people for the things they regret.  Honestly, however, pretty much everything we do, we created.  

In one way, blaming circumstance for regretful actions or events acts as a panacea for us.  The feeling becomes less caustic because we can deflect the responsibility for it onto someone or something else.  This, however, proves to be a short-term fix.  One part of our brain always refuses to believe the stories we weave, and subconsciously we continue to feel the effects of regret. Because we refuse to recognize them as our own mistakes, however, we can do very little to mitigate the effects of regret.  We cannot deal with things we do not properly acknowledge. I think it is when we own our actions, experiences, and intentions we finally alleviate the sense of regret.  By recognizing that we did what we wanted to do, engaged in behaviors we desired, or created situations that we needed for one reason or another,  the regret doesn't linger quite as long.  We own it, acknowledge it, and release it eventually.  We can never release what we do not consider to be ours....you cannot give away something you yourself do not own.  Own your history, learn from your mistakes, take your regrets and find the lesson in them and discard the rest.

Life is too short to live feeling badly about things that you cannot change, words you cannot take back, and events that are permanently set in time.  The great thing about being human is that we continue to grow and learn.  We are a dynamic species and if willing to put in the hard work of introspection and the strenuous effort of acknowledgement, we can eventually become people who are happy with ourselves.  Our past is prologue...it makes us who we are today, but not in a static way.  We constantly draw upon the past to put the present into context, and it is solely up to us to use what we know to make the present as meaningful as possible by not clouding it with regrets. We are our own worst critics.  The hardest people to forgive are ourselves. Nonetheless, we need to forgive our own mistakes and not be constantly critical of our errors in order to live well and happily. So never regret...just learn, integrate and grow.  That is definitely something on which I am going to work.  Learning, growing, and being at peace.