"Regrets....I have a few" Frank Sinatra

It has been said that the pinnacle of life is age fifty. Fifty is the half century mark and that is when you are free of youthful folly and elderly feebleness. If this be true then all you souls out there who have just reached fifty, this is your year, enjoy. As an octogenarian I don't even remember what year fifty felt like! I hope I enjoyed every minute of it because now folly has wilted like a vase of cut flowers and feebleness is in full bloom!

But  "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead"(Old Salamander said as he steamed into a harbour full of mines) because some regrets will get you no where. I prefer to think I have reached the ripe old age of understanding. Where I have been, what I have done, the decisions I have made are what I am now. What you see is the result. The past, if it truly exists, no longer matters. My time is now. Mike Jagger said something to the effect that the past was a great place, but he did not want to be its prisoner either.

You might think of regret as a negative emotion. Most of us have been tempted to believe that if I had only made a different decision I would be a lot better off today. For example, not having enough education. That lack was the cause of missed opportunities. Or perhaps one feels they made a poor career choice, or even a bad choice in marriage. According to Stats Canada forty percent of marriages ended up in divorce in 2012. The first reason given was that the 'relationship ran out of steam/or fell out of love'. By the way, January is the big month for divorce in Canada.

Any Reason to Smile!

But on the other hand regrets can have a positive effect, or at least if you are young enough to learn. Making mistakes can help us figure out how to do it better the next time. So there is no reason to regret that which made your life better! Perhaps there are exceptions to this! Just ask Justin Bieber in a couple of years! With Sinatra, he might just have a few!

The temptation is always there especially when we are tempted to compare what we have done and what we could have done. But that kind of stress can actually lead to illness and even self destruction. The truth is, we make our decisions, learn from our mistakes, and then move on. Life is too short to spend precious days thinking of  what might have been. Hopefully most of us have learned from our past decisions and have moved on into the present. If you have not, shame on you!

What if I had been born in Syria instead of Canada?

And that's Dick's View of the World this Week.