Do me a favor for a minute. Take yourself back to a moment of irreversible loss. Relive the feeling, whatever that was. Feel it all and stand in the muck just to bring yourself to a place of utmost importance. Don’t stay there long, just long enough to gain some perspective.
We all have those moments when it is too late. Too late to change things. Too late to do things. Too late to know something wonderful. Moments we can’t get back. Moments we will never know outside our own regret.
Bring the perspective of remembering those past moments into something you are living now. What chance are you not taking? What experience is the Universe offering you that you are not accepting? What love, what embrace, what touch are you taking for granted now that will, someday, be beyond your reach?
Fear is the animal that keeps us from our destinies and burdens us with regret. Fear sends us into our shells, a place where we can’t see the stars above and where the songbirds’ voice is muffled into an indistinguishable drone. Fear takes us into a realm that keeps us from what’s dear to our hearts and pollutes the air that’s necessary for our souls to breathe. We lose ourselves in fear until that one day when we find ourselves stuck in a riptide of regret.
That is why I find it necessary to remember those moments of regret. Not just my own, but those moments I’ve witnessed others experience. I find value in the pain, in the remorse, because it reminds me of the value of shedding fear so that I may walk in step with destiny and the importance of leaping beyond the clouds of self-doubt into the arms of living. It’s not the death that frightens me, it’s the loss of living. While I love my aloneness, I adore experiencing life even more with the one who keeps me in time with my truth and helps me see beyond the clouds and I never want to regret not taking a chance, or moving beyond my own fears, to embrace that experience fully.
That, to me, is the beauty of regret. It has taught me that its bitter taste is not one I like to swallow. I may cringe, grimace and force it down in a massive gulp but is there a better way to learn not to drink from that glass again? I haven’t found one.
Perhaps we just all need to remember in order to live. Perhaps it is sane to touch a scar from time to time in order to not repeat the error that brought it. Perhaps there is utter perfection in trusting in something that muffles the voice of fear while allowing those songbirds sing with clarity in our existence. Perhaps now it is time to trade the regrets we’ve gathered in the things we haven’t done in favor of risking it all in favor of destiny.
That is my prayer as I close my eyes for the night. I pray tonight is not my last, not because I fear the sickle of death, but because there is so much I have yet to do. My patience is not tested by a child-like need to have something. It is tested by the blunt realization that now is my time, and whatever time I have left is fleeting. I’ve seen decades vanish in the blink of the proverbial eye, and I’ve seen the end come for many who were not done living but found no choice in the matter. Maybe now is the time to put some impetus on the life I have left and forget about the risks involved in living it.