Faced with the utter boredom of work and unable to access email very much, I've been stuck with various debates raging through my brain to pass the time.
The most interesting one (okay the only slighty interesting one) was whether over the course of my life so far, if I had either more things I have done that I regret or more things that I regret I did not do.
This is a tough thing to tally. There are obvious ones that will stick out right off the bat. You have to throw away things from childhood as well I think. There are the alcohol related moments, the ones that you have to really shake off the next day and hope no one saw that person leaving your apartment. Not that I would know, I'm just shooting out hypotheticals mind you. Ahh, but there's the flip side of that, the opportunities not grasped at the time. If one more hot chick tells me a couple years after the fact, "it's such a shame that you didn't ask me out, I REALLY liked you a lot" then I will be on Interstate 75 threatening to jump later today (some nutjob did that yesterday afternoon, I say push the morons on off if you ask me). I'm not sure if missed opportunity due to being clueless should count against me. Tough call.
Driving this as well, is something my grandma told me once just a couple years before she died. She told me that one day I too would be 90 and sitting all day with not much to do but think and that I would think mostly about the things I should have done but didn't, usually for lazy or stupid reasons. I've always taken that to heart and tried to apply that lesson. But how have I done? Well, it's a long ways to 90 still yet, but so far I think I'm about 50-50 on it. I will say I have at least tried a lot things even if it didn't work out. And on the whole, I really have few regrets. A few head shakers here and there, but no real regrets. Those things were often learning ops or something that led me to something better down the road.
Often, it's hard to see how our actions that seem like mistakes or a waste of time will benefit us down the road, but isn't it better than having sat on your ass and not did anything? Opportunity usually doesn't come and knock on your door I find. But it may well smile at you from across a crowded room.
"It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all"...Yeah that's pretty goofy, but true I do think. Some friends and I used to have this little bar game we played. The person with the most rejections from females during the course of the evening, didn't have to pay their part of the bar tab. This really worked to get you up and talking to people. And by the way, "hi, I need you to reject me, if you wouldn't mind" is a pretty good little opening line.
So far my regrets pretty much even out. Hopefully in the years that follow I can even do better at taking chances and experiencing rather than fretting and doing nothing.
Because my grandma was always right...