Regrets

Ralph W. Sockman once said “Let us not bankrupt our todays by paying interest on the regrets of yesterday and by borrowing in advance the troubles of tomorrow.” Life is really too short to hold onto regrets and yet we do. I suppose some of us regret a love lost. Perhaps others the choices we’ve made on a myriad of issues. I don’t have many regrets but I have a few and perhaps they might surprise you.

I think there may be more than a few people out there that regret their career paths chosen. This is not to say that I am not happy doing what I do but as time has moved forward and I have grown in areas I really did not know existed within me I do have a regret. This regret may surprise some of you but it is from the heart so I will share it with you all, none the less. I regret not advancing my spiritual life in such a way that I might affect those that need spiritual guidance. I think that I would have made a pretty effective Priest. I was unaware of this only a few years ago but a sort of epiphany has struck me that if I had studied and pursued that life I could have done a good job. I think I’m a pretty good listener and I think I can, at times, guide people to make right decisions based on truth. I am by no means perfect as no man since Christ has been but I do think I have an ability to lead that would have served me well in ministry. So perhaps that’s a bit of a shock to some of you but to all who really know me well I think it makes sense.

I have another regret that is somewhat private and personal but I feel a need to express it. I want to state emphatically that I am deeply in love with Linda and if there is anything in this world I will never regret it was meeting and later marrying this wonderful woman. My regret really goes back to my previous wife and it is something I can do nothing about or change but it is something that stays with me. I would expect that only a very small minority of people have ever had their spouse die at a young age and be in the same house when it happened but not in the same room. My previous wife, Karen, passed away over 10 years ago now after suffering a year long bout with a serious illness. Here’s the regret: I never got to tell her I loved her or goodbye when she passed. She was in a room right next to me and I discovered her passing which happened quite quickly. So there’s a rather personal regret that I cannot change.

I regret not being able to provide a more financially stable and healthy environment. We are happy and we live comfortably but we are by no means wealthy in a materialistic sense and I regret not doing more. Then again there are many people I know that have many times the money in the bank and are either bankrupt in a relationship or bankrupt spiritually so I what I should be doing is counting my blessings.

I guess this was another self-therapy lesson for me. Regrets really are a waste of good energy. Instead of looking at something that perhaps you’ve missed out on you should instead look at all you have to be thankful for. Glass half full type of mentality which I generally possess. So as Alexander Graham Bell once said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Here’s to looking at the open doors more often.