i was catching up with an old friend when our conversation led to the regrets he made with his decisions in life. had he not let pass some opportunities that came, he'd probably be in a much better state than where he is now. less empty. more motivated. more driven, perhaps. i told him that we are in a similar state right now. however, i do think about my past decisions and their consequences. but if possible, i don't dwell on them like i regretted each one that i made.
you see, we'll never appreciate the other side of the coin unless we've come to see the side we've chosen. we need to make decisions at some point in our lives. decisions where we may later on consider as mistakes. but also could be blessings in disguise once we tend to apply the lessons we learned from those mistakes. then we're glad we made those decisions cuz somehow it prepared us for something bigger.
of course there are things that brings me this feeling of regret if i try to look back on my past decisions. but i always make sure to point out the experiences i have gained had i not made those decisions at that certain moment in my life.
it's normal that we make mistakes. we may even fall twice or thrice to the same mistake. we may blame our decisions for each of them. but hopefully, the next time, we'd know better. yes, hopefully we'd really know better.
what i'm trying to say is... it's not that we should never regret our past actions. but if ever we feel like it, blaming ourselves for not discerning much before making life-changing decisions, we should learn not to stop there and let the blame consume us. it will only lead us deeper into the emptiness that we are already feeling.
did i regret my past actions? well, maybe. but i'm thankful things happened the way they did cause i wouldn't have gained enough courage to fix my own mistakes that lead me to such actions. no matter how difficult the consequences were for me to bear, still i carried them on..my heart may have been broken, but no tears need to shed. cause i've been made stronger by these experiences.
2 comments:
i learned this while watching cartoons (I think it was Jimmy Neutron of all things). Time travel to undo past mistakes will not work because you have not learned the lesson you are supposed to learn. You are bound to make the mistake in one form or another because you need to learn something from it.
Now who says you never learn anything from TV? :D
bitaw, we become successful in life because of out mistakes, that is if we try to learn from it.
I remember this from Michael Jordan's Nike advertisement :D
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