I've contemplating some specific decisions I took in the past. Wondering out loud, if it was the right one? Hindsight is cruel that way. Keeps you up. Makes you imagine the What Ifs. Matt Haig wrote once: “It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living."
My friend recently remarked that everything turns me into "some introspective zone". I guess that's been happening often these days.
And this is me trying to get some of those thoughts out in the form of a video.
For the last few days, I’ve been thinking about this interaction between Dwight and Ryan from Season 3:
Ryan: “I don’t get it. I don’t get what I did wrong.”
Dwight: “Not everything’s a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail.”
I’m thinking about failures from my past. Calculating if there were better decisions I didn't take.
Could I have had a different conversation? Should I have picked a different course? Would it have been better if I took a different path?
My brain is racing with these What Ifs.
It’s so easy for my mind to think about lives that I’m not living. As Matt Haig says:
It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
Is there something to learn from these regrets and failures? Can I use this as a lesson for a better future? Shouldn't this crippling regret lead to something meaningful?
Sometimes, the reality is you just fail. You made decisions. You deal with the consequences. There is no “better” decision that another me could’ve taken. I’ll never be able to tell if other versions of me are better or worse. I can only focus on where I am right now.
Again, Matt Haig:
Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.
Let me know if you’ve been contemplating or thinking about decisions you’ve taken? How do you deal with regrets? What gets you out of that zone?
Take care,
Nirmal Bhansali