Regrets

There is an episode of the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled Tapestry. In this story, Picard (middle) is injured in a battle. His artificial heart is damaged. He ends up facing Q, who tells him that he is dead, and the Q is the Supreme Being. Picard refuses to believe this, and in order to convince him, Q gives him an opportunity to change his life -- to change the one thing that Picard had done that he regrets.

The episode is centered around what Picard's life would have been like if he had avoided the fight in which his natural heart was damaged -- the cause of the replacement of his heart with the artificial one. Picard finds that this one decision changes his entire life, and not in a way that he is happy with. Of course, the show ends well, and he is back to being captain of the Enterprise. At the end of the show he says (something like), "I found that when I pulled at the loose ends of my past, that it unraveled the tapestry of my life."

Have you ever considered the question, "If I could change one thing about my life, it would be..." I would imagine that all of us have missteps in life that we regret -- things we have said, things we have done or not done. Sometimes those missteps are huge, and they change the directions of our lives.

One of the lessons that I have learned from my husband is this -- To quote Steve, "I'm not willing to sacrifice the present that I now occupy in order to change the past." Pull at the strings of your past, and the tapestry changes.

I found a quote today. I don't know who Fulton Oursler is, but apparently he said:

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.
I don't have any big regrets in life. I imagine there are things I have done or said or not done that I would change if I were in the moment of the occurrence, but I agree with Steve. I'm not willing to sacrifice the present that I now occupy in order to change the past.