DON'T BE SORRY!!!

Lose the Regret

Here's how the story goes

An elderly monk became abbot of his monastery, hand copying ancient texts throughout his life. After Realizing, that for centuries, his course of action had been to make copies of copies, he decided to examine some of the original documents of the monasteries. Days later, the other monks found him in the cellar, weeping over a crumbling manuscript and moaning, "It says 'celebrate,' not 'celibate!'"

Regret!!! Yes! That’s the forehead-slap of hindsight, the doleful fuel of country ballads, the self-recrimination I always feel for eating a quart of pudding in a crafty but unsuccessful attempt to avoid writing this column. Whether you've ever made a bad decision or suffered an accident then you would agree that regret has been your roommate, if not your conjoined twin. It's a very complex and confusing companion, prone to denunciatory comments and dark moods, and it changes you, leaving you both tougher and more tender. However, you get to decide whether your toughness will look like unreachable bitterness or unstoppable resilience; your tenderness, the raw vulnerability of a never-healing wound, or a kindness so deep that it heals every wound it touches. Regret can be your worst enemy or your best friend. But only you get to choose which.

There are at least two time zones where you can choose to make regret's powerful energy, healing rather than destructive: the past and the future. Both can be transformed by what you decide to do right now, in this moment, the ever ceaseless, present.

So, let us start by changing our pasts. If you think that can't be done, think again. Literally! The past doesn't exist except as a memory, a mental story, and though past occurrences and events aren't changeable, your stories about them are. You can act now to reconstruct the way you tell the story of your past, ultimately making it a undaunted and valiant protector of your future.