Still thinking about what your question of what happened to the sunny optimistic middle schooler? And why can we just decide to be happy today? (Paraphrasing).
I ask myself that same question and I want to answer that question so badly, and more so, do something about it. Struggling to get there. Struggling to reading all of those great books that we’re recommend and instead watching mindless Netflix.
I don’t want to get to the end of life’s journey and have regrets.
I know the choices I want to make. That’s a start.
Before I got her text, I was struggling with a bunch of regrets I was having during the several month period before I got the Boy into Wilderness and the months after wards while I was swamped with logistics, travel and other odd tasks for the Boy.
Do I have regrets about what I did and what I failed to do, to paraphrase a line from the Catholic mass?
Yes. I have a ton of regrets, and now I am looking at the wreckage of my personal life and wondering how on earth I am going to clean up that mess. Or, can I magically start over with a new life, a fresh clean slate? But like bring all of my friends with me because I don't want the slate THAT clean. Maybe just take the nicest parts of my old life with me.
When I think back on my regrets of what I did and failed to do, I think of the fifteen things I wanted to do or wish I had done, and I only got two or three of those things done.
The number one thing I did was get the Boy into treatment. The other fourteen would have been irrelevant if the Boy would have killed himself. Would I care if I got a promotion at work if my son killed himself? No.
Some of the regrets I have are because I only had room in my life to get three out of fifteen things I wanted to get done but couldn't. Is it fair to regret not doing the other twelve things when it was of the utmost importance that I got the first three done? Should I be happy with the how I prioritized my list? For example, there were lots of issues in our marriage that Jack and I did not discuss while the Boy was settling into treatment. Do I regret not attending to them sooner? Yes and no. I wish I had addressed them sooner instead of letting them fester, but I didn't have the bandwidth. I feared that any adjustments to our marriage would have been a disaster that I didn't need while coping with the Boy. I was afraid that attending to those issues would have been pulling a pin out of a grenade and the explosion would have impaired getting the Boy to Wilderness and boarding school. There were other relationships I neglected, too. Do I regret not being as attentive and open as I could have been? Yes. Did I have the bandwidth while I was seeking treatment for the Boy? No.
I have no regrets about the priority I placed on getting the Boy in treatment, so therefore I need to cut myself some significant slack about not getting the other twelve done. My family was in crisis and I needed to pay attention to that. I can regret not getting those things done, but I shouldn't fret about it, I suppose.
Is it okay that I have regrets? In these cases, I think yes. I couldn't do everything. I had to make choices. I still might regret the things I didn't get done, but that is okay. It could mean that I had ambition to get more stuff done than I possibly could have.
Regrets drive us to continually evolve and evaluate our options. They help keep us focused on what we want and need to do. They are an engine for growth, if we let them be.
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