Oh how I wish it was possible to live a life with no regrets.

I love the light pictured above and bought it understanding its message, but for me its been an impossible achievement.

Perhaps Paul Anka, when he penned My Way, was more accurate saying “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.” 

Closer, but still no cigar. This one doesn’t particularly fit me either, since I have a few and I want to mention them.

I regret I wasn’t bolder in my youth.  All too often I lived my life putting far too much value in admonitions of ‘don’t rock the boat,’ ‘what will the neighbors think,’ and believing ‘you’ll never be able to do that.’

I regret I was never taught ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ that gets you ahead in life.  I’ve been lucky to meet many influential people, I just didn’t know I should have sucked up to them for my own good.

I regret I didn’t come to appreciate the value of learning until late in my collegiate years.  I suffered too many teachers who crushed my desire to learn.  Like the one who never gave me any homework due to her belief ‘boys never do the homework anyway’; the English teacher who told me ‘science fiction is trash and reading it doesn’t count because they aren’t real books’; and the history teacher telling me ‘history isn’t supposed to be fun, it’s memorization’.  Thank goodness my professors on Semester at Sea finally showed me differently before all was lost!

I regret I wasn’t always a better owner to my dogs.  There is much truth in the saying “there’s no such thing as a bad dog, only bad owners.”  I should have trained better!

I regret how I ended too many relationships with people who shared portions of their lives with me.  Growing up in a classically dysfunctional, alcoholic family I knew nothing about how to maintain healthy relationships, especially when those relationships were ending.  No excuse, but being the quintessential invisible child in my family, I thought ghosting was the perfectly acceptable way out. 

I regret how loyal I was in my working career.  I believed the BS about ‘do a good job and you’ll be rewarded’ and that loyalty at a firm went both ways.  As a result, too frequently I put up with, or kowtowed to, bad bosses or stayed in a job because I felt duty-bound to be a loyal employee. 

I regret how many people I’ve fallen out of touch with.  As I’ve written, each has left me Wondering.

I regret, most of all, I was not able to provide better comfort to my wife during her war against brain cancer.  I often counsel caregivers saying ‘superheroes only exist in the comics so remember Superman and Wonder Women were never caregivers’, but I regret there wasn’t more I could have done to ease her suffering during cancer.

Luckily the regrets haven’t dominated, but it’s funny how they can really drag on you at times.  I fight to not let them take over, but there are those nights when they avalanche out, giving me a hell of a mess to contemplate.

Just my two cents, plain…