On Regrets

Maybe it's the fact that my 40th birthday is fast approaching, or maybe it's the series of events that have unfolded over the past two years that have prompted me to spend hours of my time in quiet introspection. Normally a healthy practice towards achieving self-awareness, over time it has become a slug fest of sorts where I ultimately end up picking at the scabs of my regrets.

At one level, I recognize the futility of regret but at another level I secretly wonder about the lessons that hide themselves in the messiness of my bad choices. "Everything happens for a reason," seems like a license to dig through my unfortunate failures in a desperate hunt for meaning.

My son is on a crash-course and I feel absolutely helpless as I witness one bad decision after another. My heart breaks as I calculate this growing number while he works towards his own long list of regrets. How do you explain to someone so young that he is changing the course of his life with each choice he makes? How do you convince someone that as they age, the things that seemed important in high school fade into the shadows of new goals and responsibilities? Things that seem important today won't even register as an afterthought as he navigates his way through adulthood.

I attended a session years ago and afterwards I wrote letters to the important people in my life as a way of making peace with some of my old regrets. It seems now like such a simple task, but it essentially erased any guilt I was feeling about old decisions and behaviours. It gave me the absolution I was seeking and expunged those old regrets so I could free up energy to build better relationships with the people I love. It released me.

My son, I believe, will need to search for his own panacea for peace. Maybe a letter, maybe not. First, I suppose, he needs to feel regretful and I am not certain that he has arrived at that place. I think to get there, he first needs to feel the results of his many actions and how they have limited him from achieving what is most important. Only then will he begin to dig through the aftermath in search for meaning. The best I can do for now, is to hope that when that time comes, he finds what he is looking for.