Wistful Regrets

Several years ago, I had a website that was about wistful regrets. A quick overview of this website is that we all had dreams of what we would become when we were kids. And before we knew what was happening, we were forty years old with a family. Each one of us dreamed a dream, but life often changes those dreams. We made promises to ourselves and our family but missed the opportunities that would have allowed us to fulfill our dreams. Looking back, we have regrets.

I set this site up about one o'clock in the morning, a time for casual introspection and shallow confessions to one's self. I was somewhat startled to hear myself saying that I didn't have any regrets. No regrets? Surely this can't be. My life has not been uneventful; I've had my share of failure, betrayed trust, disappointed expectations, public embarrassments, missed opportunities, stupid blunders--my wife could tell you about my experiences with investments in silver and milk. Don't these things count as regrets?

I've thought about it long and hard. Indeed, I feel regret about some of the things I have done and have not done. If I could do some of them over again, I like to believe I would do them differently. But I don't carry these things around me like giant boulders with "Regret" engraved on them, like those polished stones in garden stores reading Peace, Tranquility, Love---as if these things became more meaningful by being carved in stone. My regrets are not carved in stone; I don't take things on as burdens.

It's a gift I wish I knew how to give to others. Those giant boulders of regret do more damage, hold more people back, limit more creative energy, destroy more faith than lack of money or commitment. But there must be a way to shift our understanding of regret so that it becomes regret with a small 'r,' no more significant than any other knowledge we gain through experience.

I'd like to believe that my accumulation of experiences, regretful and otherwise, has made me wiser, but I don't have much evidence that that's true. I only have proof that accumulated experience has made me older. But with that has come to a more profound sense of the place of regret in my life—my spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ, what more could I have done? Regret fills a quieter, more reflective place that hands up gifts of possibility for the future. I often tell my wife I want to grow old with her--- the end is to age gracefully. But when I think of aging gracefully, I find that it is a myth. Perpetrated by cosmetic hucksters and mega-vitamin pushers, it falls into the same category of lies as no regrets, such as "I'm 80 now, and looking back, I have no regrets."

What does "aging gracefully" mean? Like military intelligence, airline food, soft rock, California culture, and sanitary landfill, it's an oxymoron born of wistful longing. Don't you think that by the time you are 60, it's time to kiss such vanity goodbye? One of the few perks of old age is not worrying about what people think about you, your looks, or your actions.

One of the greatest gifts of being-- as my grandfather would say, an old geezer is just the person you are—without the mirrors, pretext, or apology. It is the first time in many years that you can comfortably embrace who you are.

I look at this new generation of kids with their green and orange hair and multiple skin piercings and think how crazy the world has become. But we were no less crazy, along came a spouse, and we bent and compromised our personalities—she did an excellent job on changing him. Our jobs, too, demanded conformity to company ideals warping our souls even more. What is amazing is that we could keep intact as much of ourselves as we did.

Now, suddenly we are getting old or as with some of you got old--- we have an opportunity to be who we are.  Our lives are much more enjoyable when God made us and not what someone has molded us to become. Life is short and fleeting. In retrospect, what is essential? What do you think about late at night when you can't go to sleep? God had so much for our lives, but we missed the opportunities because we became what others wanted us to be rather than what God wanted. If there is a secret to life, it is to surrender your will to the will of God. Live your life unto the Lord, and you will have fewer regrets