No Regrets

The Infinity of Choice

“What regrets do you have?”

I had just finished talking* about my travels over fifty years, and what I had learned from them. This was an earnest question from a young lady in the audience.

Regret - I heard myself answer - is about a road not taken. But that road I didn’t take - I didn’t know much about it. I could see it till it rounded a bend, or crested a hill. After that, it was all imagination.

If it ran straight, perhaps I could see as far as the next fork. Which way would I turn when I reached there? If I said I already knew, this would be a lie. It would be to deny myself the lessons I could learn along the way. For the path teaches with each step. If we are open.

Three or four forks down the road I didn’t take, and I would be in territory I could not see. In a land I didn’t know. A land that perhaps no one knows, so many are the forks in each life. In each of billions of lifes.

Some paths don’t even exist till somebody hacks them out of forest, or builds them over gushing streams.

Those roads not taken, those regrets I could insert into my life, they would be regrets for the imaginary. For the illusory realities into which I could have walked myself, if only…

The only reality I know, I said, is where I am today. The path that brought me here was not found on a map. It was charted by every fork I took, every person I held close to my heart, every journey I took, every piece of music to which I danced, every writer who moved my heart, or shaped my mind.

The only question worth asking myself is - Am I happy today? Luckily, I am supremely happy.

And if I were not?

Then ask myself what I need to do today, to find a path to happiness. If necessary, to craft one, through the thickets of bramble I have allowed to grow around me.

Not, and never, to regret.

That is perhaps a nice phrase with which to end this little thought piece. To the young lady in the audience, though, I did also say - I have many little regrets. Most of all, about the times when I was impolite to people, or didn’t give them enough attention. I treat these regrets as prescriptions for a more aware self, a kinder self.

*