What did you learn?
I ask myself that question often. I ask my children (who are adults, now, and who rarely come to me for advice) the same thing. What did you learn?
I don’t make mistakes.
That sounds funny, coming from someone who has lived a life full of challenges, most (okay if I’m being honest and transparent, ALL) of which were a direct result of my own choices.
Looking back, I can’t say they were “mistakes.” Definitely lessons. Definitely challenges. Definitely not the normal way people do things. Do I regret the choices I made?
The easy answer, the Frank Sinatra answer is, “I did what I had to do…I did it my way.” “Of course,” I might say, with a toss of my head and a shrug of my shoulders, “I had no other choice.”
Truth is a hard pill to swallow. To own regret is to own our mistakes and take responsibility for our actions. It is easy to blame someone else. At the end of the day, we each control our own lives. Owning our choices and feeling regret? That’s a big one.
I’ve had people argue that point with me before. Hell, I’ve argued that myself. As a younger, less experienced (less hardened?) woman, I often felt the victim of my world. A victim of teen pregnancy (hmmm…,) a victim of poverty, a victim of abuse. The list could go on and on, of all the ways in which the world victimized me and took away my choices.
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