Light a Fire

The way I see it, there’s two ways to look at regrets; you can regret things you did, or you can regret things you didn’t do. With the things you did, they’re done; feeling bad or regretting what has happened won’t change anything and you could spend days, months or years wallowing in some sort of suspended animation and despondent emptiness over something that you will never have the power to change. We’re probably all guilty of this from time to time, and maybe it’s for the best, because it gives us some perspective on what’s important. I’ve immediately regretted things I’ve said and done in my life, but all I can do is learn from those mistakes, I can’t change history; that stuff happened. I said those things and I did those things. Now, having made those choices, I can make better ones in the future...hopefully.

If you’re sitting around regretting things you haven’t done, get up and go do them. That version of regret is fixable. Buy a ticket to Europe, take the job you’re afraid of because it’s a challenge, go talk to the girl that makes your coffee every morning. I’m no expert at all, but the way I see it, the worst case in most scenarios where you take a leap of faith, is that you end up right back where you started. But at least you tried; at least you stood up and put yourself out there. If you didn’t reach your goal, or the goal you thought you wanted, you can be disappointed or sad, but you won’t have any reason to regret it.

And maybe that brings up a different point, a slightly different road you can walk down…let’s say you have a dream in mind, a plan, a goal. You set out to achieve it and you fall short of the boats and hoes but you get the house and kids. Is it at least a version of the dream you envisioned? If it is, that’s still a success in my mind. Everyone who has dreams of something bigger and better for themselves has a picture in mind, but no way of knowing, aside from TV or movies, if our mental picture is even remotely similar to what’s attainable in the real world. Obviously, there will be times where your picture wasn’t half as amazing as you imagined; but there will also be times where you set out on a path and don’t get to what you imagined as your ultimate goal. However, if you are happy, and you can look back and know you gave it everything you had, I would take that as a huge success. You went out and ‘DID’ while the majority of people on the planet simply existed.

There’s this article that’s been floating around the internet for a while about deathbed regrets and the five things most people say they with the would have done…quick side note, it’s the five things they wish the WOULD have done, not the things they wish they WOULDN’T have done. Anyway, they basically boil down to living the life they wanted to live and not the one that others wanted them to live, not working so hard, staying in touch with friends, expressing their feelings and letting themselves be happier. Before this article existed, one of my biggest fears was that I would live my life and be mediocre; knowing full well that I have the tools to be great. 

Since moving to Seattle two years ago, I haven’t been immune to that fear, but it’s kept me motivated and moving forward. I try to use the fear as a barometer to point me at what’s truly important; the more it scares me, the more I want to put it off until tomorrow, the more I see clearly that THAT is the direction I need to go. I don’t think that living a regret-free life is easy, if it were there’d be a lot more happy people in the world, but I think that if you want it and make it happen, you will get more from this life than most other people. You’ll have more experiences to share with your kids, you’ll have more laughs with your friends, and you’ll probably even suffer greater defeats than anyone else you know. But when the smoke clears, wouldn’t you rather have been out on the field knowing you gave it everything you had, rather than watching from the sidelines and being too afraid to step up and make a play? I would.