Some people declare if they had their life over they would make no changes. Some people declare they have no regrets. Bullshit.
Everyone has moments in their life they wish they could have seen coming…made judgement calls that perhaps they should have better judged, or simply chosen to take the wrong road at the wrong time…
But what the winding paths of life are showing me…is that despite these regrets, despite those silly, often inconsequential things that somehow would change your life beyond all magnitude is one constant. You.
Lets face it. I have made some STUPID stupid decisions, and thankfully my regrets brought about by these in time are often minimal… i have also had some life events unfurl around me…seemingly oblivious of my role, my actions and my decisions that have altered the course of my life, my self, my beliefs forever and the worst, are those conscious choices we make at a crossroads in life that change direction forever… but the remaining constant in all this? Me. And given the chance to do it all again… i wouldn’t change. Not because of some altruistic belief that my life is perfect, that regret does not exist… but because despite the pain, the heartache or the ill that befalls, beneath it all… i am still, me. Those stupid hollywood moments, where you get the second chance and make the other decision cant truly exist…because even though those life changing events may have hinged on the simplest of choice… the red top or the green…at the end of the day i am still me and the decisions i made were still mine to make based on the very essence of me at that given time. Have i changed as a result of the crap that goes on around me? Maybe over time i developed a hardened exterior, but inside? Nope, still me. I am deeper than those inconsequential decisions that we lament and i am more than the sum of a few life changing moments. I am a core that is merely viewed at in different angles dependant on the direction of life at any given time.
I can look back now at the hurt the pain or the regret…i can wince at the agony of a dream destroyed…but would it have been any different given a second shot? Would i now be blissfully riding into the sunset? My inconsequential choices all added up to a state beyond my control. Even my conscious decisions have led to the spot that i am standing on right at this moment. But the fact is…those choices, those decisions…perhaps they are not as free willed as we thought.
I mean i wouldn’t wish the heartache on anyone…let alone feel to go through it again…yet despite my mind’s constant wonderings of “what if”… i have come to accept that the dream of what might have been is merely a futile search for a quick bandaid on a bleeding memory… what “might have been” truly cant have been for to do so would be selling out on myself, going against the soul and commencing a life as an entirely parallel person, who quite frankly i am not., my stupid daydreams of making a different choice and experiencing this far off utopia therefore are a wasted energy. There is no utopia. At the end of the day…whether you had to go through it all again or not..sometimes life just sucks.
So why then, knowing that sometimes…we just need to feel the hurt, that sometimes things simply will go wrong…why do we feel the need to lament and question what our role was in all of this?? On top of the pain that simply exists do we add salt by blaming ourselves and existing in the torturous state of…if only i’d done something different? Surely this self defeating, sadistic torture can be done away with if we purely accept that we are who we are and the decisions we made were made by us… that no amount of time machines would change us and that therefore..this is simply what life had in store…
And yet..in spite of my acceptance of this fate. And my knowledge now, that despite my “what if’s” the decisions i made would still weave their way into my fate do i still yearn for a life that is not mine?? For a world that can only exist in shattered dreams? For a dream that no longer exists?
And why…to further insult my quest in the search for zen does fate throw me constant reminders… repeats situations, in which only the external scenes, props and players have changed.
Why do my demons, those little trinkets that could have would have should have changed everything reemerge in a parallel situation, a parallel time…only to have me, inevitably make those same choices over again. Am i meant to have learnt something?? Make the hollywood change and reemerge with a whole new life? Or am i meant to know myself so profoundly that i am to accept the choices i made then, despite the pain, are still the choices i make today… thus merely confirming they were and therefore always will be, the right choice. For me.
Hollywood has a lot to answer for in my futile quest for perfection. Yet, given the chance to go back and do it all again, do i have regrets? Would i make the changes? Regrets yes, those are life…and we need to accept often they are beyond our control…but the changes? No? The only changes needed here is acceptance that time has passed and life rolls by…whether i am living it right now or not.
