Many will argue that there’s really no place in life for
regret. The idea being that every experience we encounter has the ability to
teach us something and there is tremendous value in expanding ourselves through
life experience.
I mostly believe this.
If you look back on your life, especially the deepest,
darkest, hardest, most challenging parts, you can probably pinpoint something
you had or hadn’t done that defined that experience, or at the very least
contributed. Maybe it wasn’t the darkest time. Maybe it was simply a moment
when you had a decision to make and you made one that took you down a longer,
harder path than the other choice could have lead you.
While it’s true that all of our experiences do have a lesson
to teach us and offer us a deeper understanding of ourselves and our lives (if
we choose to do the work needed to get there); there are also choices we make
that we may always wish we had chose differently. And that is absolutely normal
and okay.
I’m going to share with you a story that has stuck with me
for the last six months. It’s a story that has left me thinking a lot about the
idea of regret. It’s tugged at the very core of my being that asks itself, “Am
I living my life they way I want to be living it?” and “Am I loving the people
I love the way I want to be loving them?”
A few days after Thanksgiving, I was traveling back to San
Francisco. It was your average flight. A little bit of a delay, a few bumps of
turbulence (which always feels like the end of my life flashing before my eyes…
I’m one of those people). Four hours
later, we landed. Like modern day clockwork, most everyone stood up and crowded
each other as if it might help them get off the back of the plane faster. Of
course, we all reached for our cell phones and simultaneously, one message
alert after another chimed off.
Within a minute or so of cell phones ringing and people
crowding, the sound of a heavy sob began echoing through the back of the plane.
It was the heart wrenching cry of a woman still sitting in her window seat,
sandwiched between a bunch of anxious travelers ready to make their exit.
These weren’t just your average sad cries. The sound of her
cries carried the kind of gut sinking, mind numbing, life altering pain that
was so powerful I could literally feel her pain in my own stomach.
My boyfriend and I looked at each other with tears in our
eyes over all the possible things that whatever message was just delivered
could have been. I wanted so badly to
climb over the several rows and numerous people blocking between us and go over
to her and hug her and help her. I knew there wasn’t much help that could be offered
to someone in that much agony, but at the very least a hug could make her feel
less alone. I found myself growing anxious over the fact that no one near her
was doing that. And then finally, a stranger close to her put a hand to her
shoulder and asked if she was okay.
The sobbing woman, between her gasping, choking breaths
said, “She’s gone. My mom just died before we landed and I didn’t make it in
time to say goodbye.”
At that point, there was nothing I or anyone else around me
could do to keep the tears from rolling out of our eyeballs. It was as if all
the pain this woman was expelling from her body had entered into everyone
around her, and we all just stood there in the back of the plane crying,
holding our loved ones next to us, while this woman and the stranger who
finally consoled her cried together.
A million thoughts went through my mind. From all the
possible reasons why she wasn’t with her mother on Thanksgiving weekend, to
when the last time she saw her was, to wondering what their relationship was
like. I wondered if her mom had been sick or if something unexpected had
happened. I wondered a lot of things. I will always wonder these things. I will
never actually know.
I wonder about this woman often. I wonder about her healing
process. I wonder if she feels regret. I wonder if she’s doing okay.
What I walked away thinking about that day, was what if I
were in her shoes? I imagine, as hard as this is to say out loud that I would
probably always regret never getting the chance to say goodbye to my mother or
my father or my grandparents or anyone else important to me in my life.
This experience reminds me of just how precious and
unexpected life can be. It reminds me that we go about our days assuming we
will have always be granted the next. That we will always have time to make
that phone call, or have that hard conversation, or quit that job that makes us
miserable, or start that exercise program, or quit that bad habit, or forgive
that person who did that awful thing, or say we’re sorry for that awful thing
we did.
In the last three weeks, one of my best friends almost lost
her life unexpectedly. Another friend unexpectedly found out that she has a
brave battle ahead of her to fight for her own life. All examples of healthy,
happy people who have been living their life just like we all do and have and
were suddenly faced with a battle to save their own.
So, I end this by saying—if you were the girl on the plane
or my friends who have a tangible look at life and death, what would you
regret?
What would you change? Who would you make things right with?
Where would you choose to go? How would you live life differently so that when
the people you love inevitably pass, or equally as tough to think about, if
your days become numbered—what could you do to feel good about the choices you
made and the choices you can make today?
We all have a little regret in our lives. We all also have a
choice to lessen the amount of it.
