Is there Time for Regrets?
What if…. You could turn back Time?
Would you?
Having recently listened to the book, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, I found myself wondering about end-of-life thoughts, but with a very new appreciation of confusion.
Deciding is a tricky business sometimes and not just the little decisions such as what to eat for dinner, but the bigger life choices such as what career path to follow, where to lay down some roots can, at times, be fraught with anxiety at least for this human. You?
I can say that I have spent some time wondering what might have been had I made alternate choices, but I always arrive at the same conclusion; no regrets because it’s not all about me. I have two fabulous children and I can’t imagine a life without them in it, so I feel as if all the paths I took lead me to them. Corny?
Now back to the book I mentioned. Deciding means we cut out choices which also means we cut out potential opportunities. If we are not paralyzed into indecision, we make a choice and move on hoping for the best while awaiting the next decision. Lesson learned from prior decisions help guide us along the way and before we know it, we are so far down the journey of our life-good, bad, or somewhere in between.
The Life You Asked For?
While enjoying this book, two strange things showed up for me. One was a random text from someone scouring the property records trying to see if I was interested in selling my house. It said, “Never try to go back and repair the past, construct the future, which is predictable.” Not sure why someone wanting to purchase my house would send this, but I found it fascinating that they had their own take on the past and the future.
The second strange event was also with a text but through a message board one of those neighborhood apps to buy and sell items. At the bottom of her message was a message from 2 Corinthians 4:18 which is “Look not to things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are visible are temporal, but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting.”
Okay, I am no expert on the Bible, and I could be completely off base here, but this made me think of feelings and experiences as more precious than the type of home one lives in or the type of job they have. All of this brought me back to my children. Spending time with them while they were little was taken for granted but I have the memories.
Was this a coincidence or was the universe conspiring? But conspiring about what? I don’t know what I asked for. You may have heard the saying from Paulo Coelho “when you want something, the whole universe conspires to make it happen.” I must have been thinking about the past and probably the possibilities that lie ahead, maybe even wondering about choices such as whether to continue living in the same place or move closer to my children. Alas, maybe it is just selective attention bias. You may have experienced this after deciding on a particular car you set your sights on and then you start to see them everywhere. You thought you were original and once you see so many, you start to feel like everyone else. I think it is rather entertaining myself.
I would like to think it is the Universe conspiring. If not, I will just have to sit tight and wait. But wait for what? A time to wonder if I should have sold the house and moved on to a new adventure or if sticking around for now is a better choice? Who knows? Like the owl for the Tootsie Pop Drops said, “the world may never know.”
For now, though, I shall continue to ponder the different paths I might have taken and potentially might take and enjoy the journey.
I give this book 5 Post-it rating on a scale of 1-5
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