I often look back at my life and at many choices I’ve made among many circumstances I’ve experienced and wonder about some of the regrets I have about some of those choices. I wonder what would have been different if only I’d chosen a different path or made a different decision here and there. Where would I be now? How would I feel? And I wonder about those that my choices may have impacted and how they feel now but also how they might have been impacted differently had my choices been different or not involved them in the first place.
Thankfully I don’t have a ton of regrets. And the ones I do have are not so horrible that I wake up thinking about them but they are significant enough that I do often wonder about them. Especially those from when I was much younger, from that time before I had sufficient experience to always know that I was creating my own future regrets. Mostly stupid human tricks they were admittedly. Picking on and making fun of other kids when I was in grade school. Taking risks that I considered fun but were really actually very dangerous when I was a teenager. Getting reckless in my pursuit for excitement when I was in college. You know, things many of us did before we learned to “know better.”
I try to live my life now consciously enough to feel as though I will not have regrets in the future. Unfortunately, the future is the only thing that let’s me know if I am successful in this and I sometimes find that I am not once I get to that future. Regrets are, regrettably, part of this life. It seems that no matter how hard I try, I can’t consistently and continuously act with such integrity and consciousness that I find my self regret-less in any moment. I have learned techniques that I feel have helped me achieve a less regrettable state of being, however. Yoga is one of them. I’ve found that the physical practice of yoga actually dampens many of my more physically related regrets. I believe the right kind of breathing can heal much more than we may realize and much more than science has yet to discover. And of course, the physical practice brings strength and health which makes up for much of the abuse my body has endured in the past that I now sometimes regret.
I’ve also found that Faith - and I never refer to faith in any particular form in my writing because all that counts is that you have Faith - is another rather amazing tool. Having Faith seems to me to lead to explanations for many things. The simplest way for me to personally express this is through the expression that “everything happens for a reason.” I use the word expression because I believe there is so much behind those words that is of a deeply personal and spiritual nature that no two people can say that and mean it in exactly the same way. Viewed in this context, regrets are just a thread in the fabric of this life we are weaving.
I think that I have come to terms with this in that way by choosing to believe that the Universe uses regrets as one of many ways of reminding us to pay more attention to the moment. Regrets are part of the energy that moves the needle and pokes us as it weaves the life we are living. Reminding us that we need to pay attention so that the weave is straight and true and the pattern one that pleases us once we’ve completed it. Reminding us that if we are not careful, things can become unwoven and the pattern in the fabric unattractive. And that we need to practice consciousness in every moment because if we don’t, we’ll end up with holes and weak spots as we look back at what we’ve woven and realize that we regret much of the pattern we’ve created. A pattern that we then can’t fix.
I often wish it were easier or more straightforward to set the design for my life. Set a path that I know will only lead to the kind of weave that I know I will be happy with when I look back at my life’s work. Unfortunately I can’t because I’ve also realized one very important thing - circumstance, although having reason, is not predictable nor generally avoidable. Circumstance in all it’s vastness and in whatever form it presents itself is often thrust upon us unconditionally. The larger fabric that each of our own experiences contributes to has such a complicated weave of circumstance that we can never see it’s pattern. That pattern is what creates circumstance in each of our individual lives - be it sudden death or sudden wealth - and contributes to itself in a way that we cannot imagine. That sudden death for example is of course impactful to us individually but may also impact someone we don’t know and never will know in a way that leads them to their own purpose, their own reasons. And so on and so on, each life circumstance weaving together with other life circumstances to create the grandest weave of them all.
Ultimately the reality is that I can only set a path into each moment that I know will prepare me for whatever that new moment might bring. I can only take it one moment at a time. One breath at a time. Remembering to breath and consider instead of just reacting as all that circumstance manifests in my individual life. There is really no other way I don’t think.
