Regrets, or Lack Thereof

The June 19th post to the Secret Regrets blog

I regret everything about what I did to you. How I told you that you were different. How I built everything about you up. How I showed you how to be better at everything you did. How I showed you your true potentential. But how I didn't show you how to live it out without me around. I regret giving you a glimpse of what life could be like for someone more ambitious, knowing full well that I never really loved you and that you would fall right back down to what you were before I met you the second I did. Because for some reason you have no ambition. And I regret being right about all of that. Watching you take back all of your bad habits, and end up right back where you started, broken and bruised. I couldn't fix you, and trying was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I hurt you to no end, and I honestly regret that more than anything I have ever done. And this sounds pretentious, but I feel that I gave you a glimpse of true hapiness in all that I did for you that you will likely never experience again. My love was a figment of my imagination, a reason to help you. No one should ever be loved like that. I am sorry. Male, 20

And I wrote this in response:

I used to think that I was somehow flawed as a person because I was not ambitious in life as others kept telling me that I should be. I regretted every day that I couldn't stoke myself up to try for some higher position at a job, or a better job. That I was able to be content with what I had in life without constantly reaching for more...

But then I realized something. Those I know who are ambitious are missing out on some of the nicer, finer things in life. Workaholics who never see their families. High fliers who spend too much looking at the stars and never see whats in front of their face. People who are so wrapped up in what they want to be that they never take any time to simply be who they are.

I have ambition, but not the kind that involves high paying jobs, owning a home, having a family. I want to write, thats my life's dream, thats all. That is my ambition, what I live for... But it doesn't consume me.

Jobs are a necessary evil, they are a way to make money and pay the bills so that I can write in my spare time. Relationships and romance are lovely, they inspire me, I make time for them because they are an important part of life. Family, I don't expect because I don't plan to have children, but thats a personal choice and not something I'm sacrificing for ambition.

As troubled as my life is, and as complicated as things get for me sometime... I no longer regret my lack of conventional ambition. I'm happy to drift with life and enjoy the moments as they come. I intend to fulfill my dream someday, but it is something that can take a back seat to other things when necessary.

I can think of half a dozen people who could've written this post about me, because they were too busy trying to teach me how to live their way to understand.

Ambition isn't everything, and if you throw your life away on it you will look back one day and regret all the things you missed out on because they weren't as important to you at the time.

Me? At the end of my life when I look back, there may not be a lot of accomplishments... but there will be a lot of warm memories (and even cold ones) of the adventures I've had along the way.

I'll take living over existing any and every day.