Breathe Easy: Regret

To even emphasize how fast life is moving, and how we are all getting old… My best friend just got an amazing job in New York City! After hearing this exciting news, I immediately packed my bags and was traveling up to the big apple for a celebratory weekend…(I see this becoming a reoccurring thing)… the long travel allowed for lots of deep thinking, and then the trip itself, with our late night chats (and alcohol), allowed for even more thinking. There was one topic in particular that kept popping up- regret. I don't understand regret, I hate regret, and I have unfortunately dealt with it on numerous occasions… despite trying to be cool in high school by going around saying, "I HAVE NO REGRETS!!!!"…which was completely un true, no matter what I said, or denied, I did and do have regret. I just can't understand why I do? Logically, the concept of regret doesn't make any sense to me, and I see that pest rearing its ugly head up more times than not, reminding us to never be fully accepting of the things we have done. Think about it, we are constantly questioning things… "Should I have acted that way?" "Should I have said what I did or could I have been nicer?" Even the most trivial of situations, "Should I have replied to his text that quickly?" And when we THINK we made the right choice, that pest is always in the back of our minds, "ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE?" making us rethink the situation all over again, turning us into anxious monsters who went from sure to completely unsure, in seconds. This is where my logic comes in, I can see how ridiculous it all sounds, but my heart and emotions definitely win the fight against logic on most occasions.

Do you notice when you start getting that worrisome feeling, the one where you question even the way you were breathing in a certain scenario, it is always about something in the past? You can't regret something that has not happened yet, right? So the only time we get that awful feeling, is when our minds focus on something that has already happened… ALREADY HAPPENED. Did you read that? PAST TENSE. All the time and effort we put into worrying about those PAST things, is useless. Those moments are done, there is absolutely nothing you can do to change what has already happened… yet we continue to beat ourselves up, and allow it to consume us? We focus, analyze, and pick at everything, trying to reconstruct ways in our minds that would have allowed for a better outcome- inevitably making us miserable. So WHY! I don't have any answer, but it certainly drives me nuts.

I was thinking about all of this as I let my mind wander during my travels to and from NY. I began thinking about a few incidents I felt "regretful" towards. Moments where I have felt that maybe, just maybe, I should have handled things differently… "maybe this, or maybe that" running throughout my mind. But then it hit me, the moments I was thinking about, they made me happy during the time. I did those things, because at that moment, they were exactly what I wanted to do/say/be a part of… so why the heck should I feel any ounce of sorrow from things that made me SMILE? Why am I, instead, not thinking about reasons why they made me happy? Or the reasons I had so much fun? I am taking away the good moments and replacing them with regret? It is ridiculous. Who cares if you feel you could have said something differently, or acted differently, maybe you think that it would have made for a better outcome- guess what? There is absolutely nothing you can to do to change what has already happened. So, again, I don't have the answer as to why we are so consumed by regret- but next time you can feel it taking over, think about this post. Think about WHY you did whatever you are thinking about… did it make you happy? Then think of those thoughts- the reason you were involved in the situation in the first place. Or, if you can't seem to find the happiness, just remember that all this worrying won't fix/change whats been done... so just move on.