“No Regrets” is kind of a funny motto. If hindsight is 20/20, how do you know you’re not doing things you’re going to regret all the time? I try to live with as few regrets as possible, and yet there are always things nagging at my brain that I wish I has done differently.
But most of the time, these are silly little things, things I would never consider causing me regret in the future. I regret eating that fried catfish po’ boy taco with chipotle mayonnaise the other night. BOY, do I ever regret that. I regret passing up the opportunity to go to the boat party my roommate went to that one time. But only a little. And every time it’s sunny out, I regret not buying THIS HAT at Kohl’s over A YEAR AGO:
It seems to me that the aim of “no regrets” boils down to a fear of making mistakes. Of making incorrect choices. And that fear is stagnating to me. I would rather not make a choice at all than make the wrong one, and have to “regret” the consequences of my “mistake.”
For the purposes of going forward, I’m flipping my aim. I’m going to say, instead of “no regrets,” that I will strive to “make mistakes.” Perhaps the deep-fried catfish po’ boy taco with chipotle mayonnaise was a mistake (yes, it definitely was), but at least I gave it a try. Refusing to go to the boat party and feeling like I missed out may have been part of the fuel on the fire that inspired me to take a chance and try trapeze. And who knows if I would have ever worn that floppy hat (I probably would have, to death), but next time the opportunity to make a sartorial splash presents itself, I’ll remember that hat and seize it!
Perhaps down the line I’ll “regret” some things. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather regret something I did, than something I didn’t do. As I say in my ghost tours, “…life is short and we can’t take any moment or opportunity for granted.” Good advice to live by, it’s about time I took it.
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