Living a life of no regrets, does not mean you don’t have
any regrets.
Unfortunately, we are stupid when we are young, wisdom has
to be learned, so we do stupid things in our past, that we regret in later
life. I’m 100% behind living a life of no regrets, and this helps to form
decisions; if you have a
decision that can go one of either two ways, ask yourself, which decision would
you regret making, and take the path of no regrets.
What do I regret?
Well I definitely regret dropping out of Universities
when I was young. I wish I had stuck with my original choice of career (which I
think was the correct one), and stuck with my original University course (I was
doing Engineering at Cambridge University). Instead I dropped out for various
reasons, but the biggest reason being that I was a lily-livered pussy. So, I
dropped out of Uni, bummed around, dropped out of two more Unis, bummed around
some more, finally finished a degree course (1 year longer than it should have
taken), then bummed around even more doing menial temp jobs. I didn’t get my
first proper job until I was 29 years old!
From 29 I’ve made some good decisions, met some great
people, had some luck, and things have gone well for me, but I do regret what I
did, and wonder “what if I’d followed my dreams of being an aerodynamicist for
a Formula 1 team, got a degree from Cambridge, got a proper job at age of 22,
where would I be now?”
Funny that some things people might think I should
regret, I don’t. Meeting a Thai lady when I was around 27 years old, losing
£100’000+ (most of that was from an inheritance), getting into £15k of debt,
living in a £70 per week bedsit (all these things are related, hence why I put
them together), I don’t regret any of that at all, it gave me life experience,
something I was massively lacking in my late teens.
I regret playing computer games so addictively from
probably age 10 to my later twenties. Computer games are fine in moderation, I
took them way too far, and my social ability - and my social confidence -
suffered as a result. Addiction is something that cannot always be helped,
sometimes you need someone who cares to make you realize the harm you are doing
to yourself, because, to the addict, the addiction is the thing that makes life
worth living.
The past is the past, we can’t do anything about it, and
all we can hope is to have learned from our mistakes. The present is the here
and now, and where we live our lives, and choose happiness. The future is where
we hope our goals and dreams will come true.
Image: The past is
behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is
here, live it.
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