No excuses, no regrets! Today I let go...

Recently someone asked me one of those highly meaningful philosophical questions, the answers to which are supposed to tell both people very important things. The question was: "Does one really have regrets in life?" "Is there anything you really regret in your life?" I didn't know how to answer it. At first, I tried to take it pretty seriously and actually catalogue the things I regret in my mind, but soon realized that I wasn't quite sure what to include or even if I should. What does it mean to regret something? That you would go back in time and change it if you could? That's too easy. I would go back and change so many things if that were easily possible: I would even change that time I took too sharp a left turn at the end of our street and skidded off my bike and skinned my knee as a kid. Does that mean I really regret having skinned my knees and elbows? Well sure, in some sense, but I don't think that was the sense that my friend had in mind when asking me about what, if anything, I have regrets for.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that regret is a very neglected emotion. It is almost ignored, hidden, unanalyzed, almost a subjective mystery of the mind and soul. Regret is a sadder, less instructive emotion than guilt and means nothing beyond itself. Regret is completely empty. But yet regret is very real none the less.

The time has come for me to let go of my past without regret. I've carried this realization for a while now. I've grieved over the past long enough. The time to say good-bye, once and for all, has arrived and I am consciously doing so WITHOUT REGRET, without looking back. Am I rejecting my past? Hell No!!!! Part of letting go is accepting and admitting the past is over, done, finished, unchangeable, and complete. There is nothing left back there for me to do anymore, there is nothing I can change or influence any longer. Nothing is left back there for me to cling to, except some memories, some really bad, most good. But life is about making memories and taking them with you on your journey through life, always remembering, always learning. So, life is quietly urging me to move on, embrace the bright future I have ahead, and to create new memories, some bad, most good with someone a new. Life is asking me to look ahead, rather than looking behind and I shall oblige WITHOUT REGRET if that is at all possible, today I try. All that I have been and once was is important, but now, it is more important for me to move forward, and grow, into all I am capable of becoming and all I have dreamed for so long.

Getting to this point was not necessarily a conscious goal or decision on my part. The process required many months of preparation — working all the way through my pain, false hope, anger, frustration, humiliation, discouragement, and disappointment which stems from events in the past. My recovery involved learning that letting go cannot be forced but must be embraced. Letting go must come easily, naturally, at just the right time. I cannot let go until I am fully prepared to let go without regret. Regret eats at one from the inside out! I realized I could not let go until hanging on caused more pain than letting go.......and today it finally does!!!!

Clinging to the past has become far too painful for me now. Yesterday's solutions and answers to my life's problems no longer work! New solutions, new answers, new situations — a new life await me and I refuse to hold on to the past with regret any longer. I refuse to let my regret hold the person I am and who I want to become back any longer. What's over the next hill? Who knows.? But I'll never know until I let go of the past. I'm keeping a positive, hopeful attitude. I'm patiently anticipating the future, rather than obsessively trying to control it. The past cannot be changed so I leave it. I'm waiting to see what will happen next, moment by moment instead of always trying to create it. ¶ 6:17 AM