It has always rubbed me the wrong way when I heard people say that you should “never regret anything that once made you smile” or not to regret it if you learned something from it. I don’t think we should spend our time focused on our regrets, but to have them is to prove that we did learn from them. There are a few situations in my life that I regret the way I dealt with a person, or a decision I made. I don’t dwell on those regrets or even think about them often, I’ve moved forward; but I would never say I don’t regret them, because to say I don’t regret hurting someone I love is to tell them that I wasn’t sorry I did it. I feel like to not regret a way that we’ve hurt a person, or let God down, is to say that you would do it again if given the choice. Regret doesn’t have to be our focus, but our lesson learned in moving forward.
That’s not the main thought, though. That was more like the disclaimer.
Most of my life, I’ve been afraid to confront things or situations. In my childhood, there was good reason for that. Now, there isn’t. In my adult life, I got to a place where if someone offended me or hurt me, I would just start distancing myself or even cut them off completely. I was scared that confrontation would lead to the situation escalating, or that the person just wouldn’t care enough to work it out; and so I always felt like internalizing and dealing with it myself was better than trying to gage someone else’s reaction and prepare for rejection. I’ve hurt a lot of people this way, by just pushing away with no explanation and not giving them a chance to hear me out and explain or change things, and I regret it.
For a lot of people, the natural reaction is the opposite, to confront everything and verbalize every thought and every feeling in a way that is as dramatic as you’re feeling in the moment; which almost always leads to saying things you don’t mean, and regrets (if you have enough of a conscience to be sorry about hurtful things you say).
It’s really tough to find middle ground between these two. The deeper the offense or hurt, the harder it is to find the middle ground-to confront without being overtaken by your own hurt/emotions.
Today, I’m feeling at complete peace because I conquered my possible regret. Conquered for the moment, at least, as many more opportunities will come. This time, though I was facing a situation that I’d been avoiding for quite a while. It was a pretty deep running frustration/hurt and I was likely to erupt, and I didn’t. I definitely articulated how I felt and what I thought, but not with all the dramatic effect. I stayed level-headed. No more details necessary, but I confronted it in a level-headed way that left me with some insight (it may sound simple, but it felt like a revelation to me): There is no greater feeling than dealing with a difficult situation in a way that leaves you with no regrets.
This definitely requires change on our part, which many of us aren’t fond of. Many of us can hide behind “that’s just the way I am” and “I’m not changing for anybody”, but growth is change, and it’s necessary in life. If it weren’t, we would still cry when we weren’t fed and scream when our toys were taken away. We grow and adapt as children, but expect that to stop when we reach a certain age; when really, it’s the changes that aren’t mandatory and aren’t forced on us (the ones we make for ourselves) that define us.
We’ll always have moments where we’re blindsided by mistakes we made (hindsight really is 20/20), but if we just check ourselves before reacting, we can give ourselves time to gain perspective.
Call it growing up, but for the past few years, I’ve thought a lot about how we won’t all be around forever. Regarding relationships with my parents, and other people that have always been the “grown ups” in my life, I have thought about how I don’t want to have a day where they are gone and I have regrets. That’s the thought that pushed me in this particular situation to “gain perspective” and not react in my natural way. A relationship in my life was struggling and I recognize that this person will not be around forever, and realized that I wanted to do everything on my part to do right by the relationship (no matter how difficult it was to not react as I wanted to), which for me meant speaking with a level of honesty I knew would hurt, but saying it with an absence of anger and a presence of love. This way, even if the person didn’t receive what I said well, I would know I did what was best and move forward not feeling like the fallen relationship was my responsibility.
I wish it were easy to come up with an equation to handle every situation this way; but unfortunately every time it’s different. It’s not easy to know how much you should say, when it comes to the truth (which is sometimes brutal); but the common denominator for every situation is that if you are operating in genuine love for that person, you will have patience and say what they need to hear and not what you want to say to punish them. As good as we think it could feel to hurt the person who hurt us, it feels better to know that we responded in a way that doesn’t leave us with regrets. It gives us what war with that person will not give... it gives us peace.
So today I feel great. I feel like this one time, I know I handled it right. I may be 1 for 1000, but that’s a start. This new mentality is, instead of focusing on past regrets, living in a way that leaves no room for future regrets. I won’t say “taking the high road”, as too many people have abused that phrase for too long; but it means thinking before we react, and responding with honesty and love (which is patient, and kind, and not proud or rude--THAT love never fails).
