Day 296: This is what makes regret such a horrible thing

 

What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? The perfect time maybe, Or that sign and or something or someone to come along to say “ YES, this is the right time and you can stop waiting now”.

There are plenty of extremely unpleasant experiences we as humans can create within ourselves – and for me I would say one of the saddest would be regret. Regret is one of the things we cannot change, because it’s in the past. It is a moment or a choice or something we did that we cannot change and will have to live with it for the rest of our lives. Sure, you can change the experience and learn from it and try not to do the same in the future, but you still can’t change the past events.

That is what makes regret such a horrible thing – you can’t change the past. Our lives are moving forward towards an inevitable end, even though life is the longest thing we will experience we really have limited time on this earth. Look at your past and how fast it went by, it seems a decade went by in an instant. And as you get older you start looking at the words: should have, would have and could have.

Why is it that we first have to face regret to truly value the time we have on this earth and the importance of the present moment? There were so many times I wished I spoke up and said what I wanted to say. Or stand up for myself or another and say what I wanted to say. So many times where I could have made a choice that would bring a change to myself or another. But I did not, instead I told myself there is always tomorrow.

We have all experienced this throughout our lives, and it always feels like we realize this too late. But the point of this is to understand something simple which is that our lives have an expiry date. One day I will die, and one day you will die. We simply do not have time to wait and live with regret. One day it will be too late to change. There will never be a right time, there will never be a sign or someone who will come to say the time is right or that you are ready. YOU are the one who decides this. The right time is always now.

What are you waiting for?