Regret for the things we did not do is inconsolable...or so I've read. I suppose that depends on whether you feel regret--or perhaps, whether you can instead let go of it and recognize (among other things--I'm typing VERY fast this morning, so trying to keep it simple while I eat breakfast and rush off to work) that just because you didn't act on an option in front of you--even one that made all your senses sing--doesn't mean you made a bad choice.
I was proofreading an interesting computer book the other day (yes, actually interesting) and remembered the classes I took in college and kind of wondering whether if I'd done something with that, if I'd have ended up doing something interesting, important, and lucrative.
Then I remembered that 99% of the time I find computer manuals really, really boring, and I'd have to know the boring stuff to get to do the interesting stuff. So in the end, that was easy.
But some choices aren't so easy. I suggest that when we feel regret for something we didn't do (or did, for that matter), that we sit with the question 'what if' for a few minutes. See how it feels to have lived that choice. If it feels really, really good, maybe that's a sign to do something about it--there is very little in life that is too late to do (major league baseball and other people's spouses or jobs being among the things you probably should just let go of) -- but was your passion really to run WalMart? Or was it to own a successful business, supplying whatever it is that you think WalMart supplies? Was it to be curator of a great museum, or was that a cover for fear of an archeology degree and digging in the dirt (or vice versa)?
It's easy to let go of the choices that "might have been" if you concentrate on "what do I really want now."
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