I had this post lying around for a while. I’m not sure why it never went up, but there probably is no wrong time for it:
Not many people have the fortune of saying that they do not have many regrets in life, so I guess I’m kind of lucky. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t done very stupid things before, because I have done very stupid things before. But those are mistakes with necessary lessons to be learned. And I know I’m still young, so I won’t be lucky forever.
However, there are a handful of things that I wish God would have planned differently. I guess these things were also very necessary, but, to me, I still have a hard time letting the life-lesson outweigh how much it sucks. Impractical as it is, I tell God that I could have grown in a different way but I know that’s not true. Even though my regrets are not constantly in my head, I have random occasions when I pop back to the moments where things could have gone so differently and they hurt.
Then comes the rare chance when I can do something about my regrets. Not a chance to undo what God intended, more a chance to maybe have things fixed after I have learned my lesson and it has sucked for a while. I guess I’m an even luckier guy to have chances like that, but I’m a bit of a wimp. Yes I would love to mend the regrets in my life, but I also know that fixing something that is broken is hard. It requires openness, humility, and patience—qualities that are at times scary to wear on my sleeve.
But even though I am young, I have learned that the pain from regrets for doing something wrong can easily be matched by regrets for doing nothing at all. I say I am a lucky guy, but I know that there is a reason for everything. With God, chances become opportunities. So when the time comes when I can do something about my regrets, I hope I can muster up a little bit of confidence and not regret it later.
July 2010
I am so thankful He is there—always.
School work is piling up, days are getting long, time to sleep is becoming shorter, I succumbed to McDonald’s for dinner because it was fast (plus I had a free quarter pounder with cheese Monopoly piece). Future is on my mind, I should be doing this, I should be doing that. I’m told I should be preparing for the future, what research am I going to do, did I meet with that adviser yet. I’m feeling that sometimes free time is a waste of time.
I miss the summer. I miss the nights where I could just sit out on the porch of my backyard at 2 in the morning with my guitar, camera, Bible, and cereal. I had nothing to do but enjoy the night.
That would probably be the best use of my time right now, actually. I should grab my neighbor’s guitar (mine is in Chicago), take the wall mirror off my camera bag that I haven’t been using (the most expensive prop stand I own), dust off my Bible a bit, pour myself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, take a seat on the med school quad, and be really tired for gross lab tomorrow morning.
