Do you ever lie awake at night, unable to sleep because of the thoughts that run through your head? In my past, when this would happen, my brain would generally focus on the really dumb small things that I had done that day, like said something that on reflection wasn’t particularly intelligent or done something that made me look stupid.
I think a lot of us do this as children, because we’re still learning our way.
But I found as I get older that my brain doesn’t focus on those small and insignificant things. Maybe it’s because I’ve healed a lot of those insecurities that made those things painful, or maybe it’s just because the older I get, those small mistakes are dwarfed by other things… things that in the moment weren’t so embarrassing, but when compounded with time their magnitude changes.
And you come to see how they have affected your life, and in some cases still do.
I once heard the phrase that the pathway to wisdom is littered with mistakes, and I don’t know if I would consider myself wise at this point, but I’ve certainly put in the work of mistakes Yet as time has passed and the small things fall away, I find it harder and harder to do with the emotional fallout of some of the bigger mistakes of my life.
Because they didn’t just affect me, they affected my family and sometimes the people around me.
It’s very easy to look back on those mistakes and get lost in the nature/nurture argument, and trying to figure out whether these are a result of the circumstances of my environment, the nature of my personality, or some strange combination of the two. Yet I realize in doing that, I am really trying to find a point of blame, which doesn’t really help with anything.
Because what I’m really trying to do is live with the grief of lost opportunities, and the fear of making worse mistakes in the future.
In one of my previous pieces, I seem to remember writing that regret was a poison. Honestly after 600+ pieces of this work I can’t tell you all the things that I’ve written, but that one stands out. I guess at this point in my life I’m trying to learn to live with the poison of regret, while realizing that even that emotion compresses my soul, and makes it harder to do the things I need to do to change the outcome of some of those mistakes.
In trying to change, I am confronted with all the reasons that I made the mistakes in the first place.
And that can be really hard to live with. On the nights where sleep won’t come, or in the mornings where the world is quiet and I don’t have to rush out of the door to work, I find myself beset by sadness and a longing for things to be different. There are times when I can see the pathway that will lead me out of this place, but the very fears that prevented me from choosing differently back then assail me now, whispering a subtle toxin to my soul.
About how I will only make a mistake, screw things up, and feel even worse about myself when it has all gone wrong.
It’s very easy to get caught in that cycle of regret and fear. The longer I spend in those overwhelming emotions, the less confident I feel making the changes necessary to enable different future. I know that I cannot go back and change the past, but I’m trying to write a better ending to the story that I currently live, and I cling to the hope that a better ending than the one I currently envision will in some way help make all of the past worth it.
Because if all those mistakes were stepping stones to something great, I can live with that meaning. If not, then I have to learn to live with a very different emotional story than the one I would like to be.
I think it’s like one of those crazy Zen loops, where in order to make it easier to move forward in the future I have to forgive myself for the past, but the best way to forgive myself for the past is to move into a different future first. I think it’s far too easy to get caught into that way of thinking, lost in an eternal and internal pattern of frustration and fear.
Breaking that kind of a loop can be difficult.
I know it’s possible, I’ve done it before, but as I get older these kind of changes become harder. The baggage is greater, the outcome of the risks gets progressively larger, and yet in some ways so does the payoff if things work out.
Yet in order to move forwards, I have to find a belief in myself but is sometimes lacking.
Mistakes only lead to wisdom if you learn from them, and can overcome the frailties of human nature that got you there in the first place.
And sometimes that overcoming requires a degree of courage that is not easy to manifest.
But as the years pass, and the pain of regret grows, the pressure on me to rewrite the ending of the story becomes greater, and sometimes an abundance of fear, a cup of desperation and a small pinch of hope are all the ingredients you need to create a recipe for change.
And although change can be scary, if it works out, it can be all the healing that your soul needs.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings