Learning From Regret

Instead of waiting to see if you measure up, start letting everyone else know that they don’t have to.” Melissa Camara Wilkins

I suspect anyone who pays attention AT ALL and lives long enough can find one or two things to regret. I for one wish my little girl self had understood that it was not healthy for a childhood accident to be met with punishment without first checking for broken bones and glass shards. Now, I can regret not having a different experience and ruminate over it (which I have done) or I can lean in and allow my past to be my past. I can learn new ways to understand it, which is helpful. I can also use it as a lesson for how I want to live my life.

I can WISH for a different experience or I can choose to give others the gift of an experience I have learned is valuable.

I have a friend with abandonment issues. He has reacted to this problem by making sure he leaves relationships at the first sign of turbulence. Better to be the one who walks out than the one who is left behind. Lately he has started to question his choices. He’s wondering if maybe this is not living in a true way.

Maybe, he thinks, he could learn how to be the kind of friend who sticks close as a brother because he knows what it is like to be left behind. I like the way he thinks.