What to do with fruitless regrets, annoying thoughts “it was necessary then ….” and reproaches addressed to himself? Can they be constructive if “then” is long gone?
For the first five or six years you were and, without thinking about it, you strove to be, just to be – thanks to what the world, which began with your mother and gradually expanded, gave you, and in spite of it, when it was unkind. To be is to be in the present and its reflection in you. The future was not yet in your firebrand, and you did not look into it – it came by itself and was called “today.” Then “tomorrow” began to sprout from it, and you began to try on the future in dreams of becoming someone when you grow up. They were only dreams, not aspirations yet, and the nasty porridge didn’t taste any better because it would help you become a soldier. Then you were driven by an irresistible desire to free yourself from the power of adults, to become an adult yourself. And you became him. And he jumped out of his pants, and climbed out of his skin to achieve, achieve, achieve …
And so, for the time being, you live, almost without looking back, greedily stretching out the telescopic antenna of your neck with the knob of your head on it, in order to look ahead. You are all aspiration, and the sea is still knee-deep. Then you begin to see that you can not do everything, you are not omnipotent, you have achieved something, but the world does not fall at your feet – and in general, what is all this for? You are already over 40 – so what?!
You start to look back more often… Of course, there are many good things in the past. You will remember and after Galina Gamper you will sigh: “How desperately young I was, how divinely stupid.” And everything was still ahead – a stormy spring, until autumn with her counting of chickens it was so far away. And now, here they are.
You look closely, peer … and you see how much you have made a fool (yourself), hacked jambs, as you wanted better, but it turned out – your eyes would not have looked. And you did it all yourself. I did it myself! Already done, plowed, kolbasil! Spit on someone – the spit will not return, but it will return – so not yours. You can, of course, tear the hair on your head and fertilize it with ashes to grow new ones, in order to provide a scope for tearing out under your own lamentations: “I should have …” the role of the victim, in whose actions mom, dad, teachers, the state, the evil eye were previously to blame … Before the Soviet government, and now money. Well, yes, not without their participation – sometimes disastrous, but you always do it yourself. And no one acted for you before, and no one acts instead of you now.
Going through the lived day by day – life is not enough. You can’t go over everything, and should you? But if you start to catch yourself thinking “I should have…”, take a look at yourself then and now. Why, why did you then have to do exactly as you did? Why do you want to change it now? What gave you something that you would like to change in the past, how is it related to what is important to you today? It was not easy though, along snags and ravines, through fire, water and copper pipes, but is your path leading to what is dear to you? Or is it still a mistake? And if so, instead of “What have I done?” ask yourself: “How did I do this?” and look from the result to the beginning, link by link, until you find where “I wanted the best” turned to “as always” and what exactly did you do to turn it that way. If you find it, most likely you won’t repeat it: the one who does not understand how he does it steps on the rake over and over again. Because not the mistake itself is a mistake, but the mistake is not to take a lesson from her. It’s fixable – take it.
And then you begin to turn your head back less often and crackle your neck, looking ahead, you stop drowning in the past and hovering in fantasies about the future, you discover the present more and more for yourself and live in it. You live today, and not today, from which you don’t care deeply about what was and will be. You live not invented, but a living life, growing from the lived, experienced, felt and realized yesterday and open to tomorrow – such as it will be, and not obeying the desires of your left foot. Pygmalion, who every day creates himself of today from himself of yesterday, even on your last exhalation you will not be able to wipe your forehead and say: “That’s it! Ready!” So is it worth trying? But this is up to you.