There’s no if. There is only what is. What was. What will be…….No story worth telling should ever be about blame or regret.
No matter what book I’m devouring, currently The Writing on my Forehead by Nafisa Haji, little gems like the above jump out regularly to set me thinking. There are moments we can all look back on and wonder how things would have turned out had we done things differently, said things differently, gone down this career path instead of that one, married instead of staying single or stayed single instead of getting married, moved interstate instead of staying put, taken a risk instead of playing it safe, the list could go on and on.
That’s the beauty of hindsight. We can replay any situation, take out the parts we’d rather forget and put it back together how we think it should have happened. But life is messy, there are no guarantees, even when it comes to those we claim to love and care about, and we can spend an awful lot of time negotiating the rocky terrain to minimize the damage, find others to blame for our misfortune, or live with the regret of what might have been had we chosen differently.
I liked the concept behind the movie Sliding Doors, a clever portrayal of parallel lives depicting how split second decisions can change our lives and send them in a completely different direction. The hundreds of stories which come out of any disaster such as ‘If only he’d caught the later train’ or ‘If I hadn’t stopped for a coffee I’d be dead now’ or ‘If I’d been on time for work I wouldn’t be here now’ can haunt people for years, but ifs don’t change the reality. He did catch the early train, she did stop for coffee, and he was late for work, seemingly insignificant choices at the time, but the consequences can be monumental.
Enmeshed in one such moment is Christine Nixon, Police Commissioner at the time of the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria who could likely be saying to herself “if only I hadn’t gone out to dinner when I did," making a public apology for her actions on the evening of Victoria’s worst natural disaster. Doesn’t change events as they transpired, and dwelling on regrets is about as useful as repeatedly hitting the replay button and expecting the outcome to be different each time.
Pick any basic daily task. Go to a different bank branch than your usual one and you just might meet the love of your life working behind the counter, then again it might mean you happen to be there when someone decides to burst through the front door armed to the teeth to rob the place. Go the back way home instead of the main road and the drive might be less stressful, then again it might bring you into the path of some hoon testing out his dubious driving skills who manages to be coming at you head on as you turn the corner. Leave your toddler in the bath for a few moments while you go to grab the phone and things might be fine, then again they might not.
Doesn’t pay to think about it too much really. If we anticipated every likely scenario before heading out the front door we’d never go anywhere and probably end up neurotic. Our lives are littered with moments which can go one way or the other, and it’s not always the big decisions which hold the most promise or bring us unstuck. It’s those annoying little everyday decisions and reactions and responses which leave their mark. We can talk about making right or wrong choices, good or bad decisions, but in the end we have to own our choices and the consequences they bring. We can’t change the past and our circumstances are not always of our own making, but if we want our lives to change direction the chances to do that are still there for the taking if we have the courage.
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