Good Riddance

Regrets: we all have them, no matter how much we tell ourselves not to. Two months from now, I'll be graduating. In four months, I'll be entering the collegiate realm. In five, I'll be an "adult". 3 major events in my life are going to happen in less than half a year. That thought has me up all night and distracted all day because in truth, I do regret a lot of things that happened in the past four years. It's trendy and cliche to insist that having regrets would only further complicate our lives; without them, we wouldn't be able to learn from them. Sometimes I think that having regrets can be a good thing. Having a regret means that one acknowledges a mistake, a bad decision, a wrong path taken in their life. That acknowledgment and acceptance is the first step towards ensuring better decision making in the future.

When I read this article, I wasn't surprised to find "education" and "career" as the top two categories of regret. In fact, I felt rather reassured that those were the two biggest regrets of the people surveyed. 1. I could and should have pushed myself harder in my studies in high school. I don't know how different my life would have been if I did, but since I get this question a lot, I say that I would do the past four years differently if I could. 2. I haven't found my passion, but I know my interests and I'm trying my best to pick a career that I succeed in and love simultaneously and more importantly, not regret.

Regrets can tear us up and bring us down. Regrets can make us understand and appreciate. Regrets: we can choose to ignore them and move in a different direction, or we can recognize them and move forward.