Regrets
First let me thank everyone who came to our recent Stories from Storytown event at The Cutting Room. It was a great success, and I’ll be posting a recap in the next week or so. In the meantime…
It’s customary that meeting minutes identify those folks who were invited but who didn’t attend with the heading “Regrets”. I’ve always found this practice a bit overly formal and also presumptive; how do they know that an absentee wasn’t relieved to skip out the meeting?
Recently the wife of a good friend very tragically died way too early – a truly sad event. In her final days she told her daughter “No regrets.” Several friends remarked to me about that afterwards, and it has also stuck with me.
In a number of songs and posts, I have returned to the idea that sometimes I wish that I had made different life choices:
For example, this really captures it (click the image to read more):
And this (click the image to read more):
And this (click the image to read more):
And, witness this new song, which is pretty explicit on the subject (click on the image to listen):
When I played this for my daughter, instead of saying “cool tune, dad; I really dig the time signature changes in the verses,” she said, simply, “that’s sad.”
Even my somewhat controversial “A Story” and “Another Story” stories play with the idea of my internal tug of war between art and science, which theme has cropped up often in my posts and songs:
“I have a chronic feeling that I am denying myself what I dream of. I wonder if I’m the only one who struggles with this.”
I do wonder if this endless questioning is typical or rare. In the Timing post I asked “Are you clear about who you are, what you want, clear about your choices and trade-offs?” Nobody got back to me on this. So I’m left to wonder….
I’ve long thought that folks who are blessed with certainty about things – their opinions about themselves and others, their sense of “rightness”, if not even righteousness – are empowered by that certainty in a way that I have never been (or ever will be, apparently). I get the feeling that, while they certainly do and will make mistakes, their chutzpah empowers them to be effective and, ultimately, to succeed. This is probably ridiculously naïve. But one can dream….
Despite all my whining about roads not taken, I have very few regrets. And, gosh darn it, I’M TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT IT. And I know you’re tired of hearing about it. I want to LIVE! It’s a new freakin’ year, and it’s time to get moving on doing stuff that has meaning, to look forward, not back. So, NO MORE WHINING ABOUT WOULDA COULDA SHOULDA.
Thanks as always for listening. And, remember, NO REGRETS.
