Tuesday, May 02, 2006

No Regrets



It's so funny to be feeling this positive about all of my little bits of nostalgia. I've finally found peace with my past. I'm pretty self-critical and I tend to kick myself around for my mistakes. Many of those mistakes, or at least the most egregious, have been in my love life. My romantic history has been something of a tragicomedy. It seemed awfully tragic when I lived through it, but, thankfully, I see the humor in it now.

My very dear pal Monko never harbored regrets. I was always amazed at how easily she takes everything in stride. She just accepts it all. "It is what it is" is her mantra and she's totally fine with that, whatever it is. I'm always wondering "what if" and how I could have/should have handled things. I realize that it doesn't accomplish anything, it's just frustrating and counter-productive. Eventually, the genius behind Monko's life philosophy started to sink in. Now, I'm learning to accept it all, embrace my past, good, bad and indifferent. It's not like I can undo any of it. I can't take any of it back, so no more kicking myself around. By closing off huge chunks of my past, I miss out on the good as well as the bad and there was plenty of good. There was exciting good and funny good and quite a bit of naughty good, too. Some of my worst decisions led to some of my most interesting memories. To have experienced plenty of heart ache, I had to first experience plenty of love, right?

I'm not sure if I believe in "meant to be" and "not meant to be." Well, I guess it's hard not to believe in the basic, common sense, reality of things that weren't meant to be. I just find it hard to believe in a pre-ordained big picture. Sure, there are plenty of reasons why my marriage to C never was. And, why my marriage to Sparky was finite. But, I doubt very much that it had anything to do with some grand scheme for my life.

I used to wish that I could get an aerial of view of the roadmap of my life so far. Considering that my past is so littered with mistakes, it would be interesting to see where I went wrong and what those choices made impossible. I've come to many a figurative crossroads in my life and at any number of those forks in the road, genius, brainiac that I am, I've chosen my direction poorly. From a purely scientific and intellectual perspective, it would be fascinating to see how I would have done if I'd made better choices.

When I give it thought, I get that many mistakes are kind of self-correcting over time. Or, maybe you can override them. You know how they say everything affects everything else? I'm sure the way that some decisions make some things impossible , those same decisions are the only way other things can be possible. I'm one of those "it depends" people, always considering the contingencies, so this rationale works as a justification for what may be seen as my indecisive nature, I guess. Or, maybe not. Can you believe I haven't decided on that yet?

I haven't thought about my overview theory much since I softened up on myself. I didn't turn out so bad, despite my bad choices. I've had a lot of fun that wouldn't have been possible if not for some of those sketchy decisions. Some of my best adventures stemmed from making questionable choices.

Now, I guess I'm going to have to square my thoughts on karma.

2 comments:

sassymonkey said...

I try really hard not to regret things. My theory is that all those decisions in the past, the good and the bad, have made me the wonderful, oddly-adjusted person that I am. And I rather like me.

Somedays it is harder than others though. But I just keep reminding myself that I can't do anything about then but I can do things now and in the future.

JoanneMarie Faust said...

I'm exactly the same way. On a bad day, I can kick myself around for sins commit so long ago, that it's ridiculous that I even remember them.

It's really nice to know that there are others like me.