A series of essays....
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I REGRET NOT HAVING MY OWN NOVEL INCLUDED IN MY OWN LIBRARY AFTER ALL THIS TIME! TO BE CONTINUED... |
....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E Hughes
Honestly, is there a day when you wake-up without a single regret to have to think about or dissect; you loved too much or you didn’t love enough—you never loved at all?
It may be something as simple as you wish you hadn’t snatched that second cookie because now your walk or workout needs to be extended a wee bit. It could be that you’d like the opportunity to take back spoken words that may have hurt someone you love very much. Perhaps you wake-up each day with the honest belief that you could have loved someone even more then you did over one lifetime.
Regret is an intense, little word that is often responsible for robbing souls of their right to move forward by allowing them to free fall into shaded pasts and memories. The pang of regret can be as sharp as a knife thrust into the heart—the after effects pushing us down into prolonged wretchedness and misery.
The feeling of regret can cloak you within its heaviness of sorrow and distress as you feel remorse about something you fervently wish could be different, changed, or rectified. One ends up bemoaning a missed or lost opportunity in love, work, or pleasure and suffers with saline tears seeping through closed eyelids—the subtle drip, drip, drip of liquid grief.
We should not forget that it’s not only possible to learn from our regrets but that some of our proudest moments may have risen from the depths of our sorrow like some phoenix from the ashes of despair! For this reason alone, our regrets must be neatly collated, stapled, and boxed as charmingly as a loved one’s birthday present. Remembering that it is a gift from us and given back to us, we must treat it with care and believe that it is possible to make positive, long-term life decisions from distant memories and regret.
Yes, I could have loved you more in this lifetime; I could have made the days shorter, sweeter for us both. Our lives are open to interpretation making each movement and conscious decision eminently important as we follow the elegant rhythm of the life we’ve been given—this time around. And, if we have the time and wherewithal to proceed forward, to gently unwrap that gift to ourselves with the knowledge that with each regret there is time to rectify its existence and make changes. It can be done if we desire to make the effort.
“When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf from a tree.” —Wendell Berry
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WENDELL BERRY: POET, FARMER, WRITER, ACTIVIST, ACADEMIC. HE COINED THE CONCEPT OF “SOLVING FOR PATTERN” WHICH IS THE PROCESS OF FINDING SOLUTIONS THAT SOLVE MULTIPLE PROBLEMS, WHILE MINIMIZING THE CREATION OF NEW PROBLEMS. |
We have only ourselves to rely upon in this particular lifetime. Providentially, we are surrounded by the wonders of nature that guide us down gentle paths of hopefulness and beauty. Observing nature’s bounty, we revel in the motions of a single leaf that detaches itself from a tree to randomly drift down to the moss covered ground below. Feeling free, no strings attached, its journey is unencumbered by its past, enthusiastic about its future—with no regrets to pass along to another living thing. We do envy such an honest and forthright solution to a happy, fulfilled life!
Regrets—well, I’ve have a few...
Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline E Hughes
All rights reserved
