My Regret

Peter S. Beagle wrote "The Last Unicorn". In that book, the main character is a unicorn...the last unicorn. Unicorns have, amongst their many intriguing talents, a lack of regret. I really identify with that trait. I do not wish to regret my life, or any part of it.

Until recently, I attempted to live without regrets and have been largely successful. But something about lengthening nights gives me time to ruminate about my life, and things that I actually do regret.

I regret not sending out more cards to friends at holidays...God knows how much I enjoy them, it is time to return some of that feeling to others.

I regret saying "No" more often than "yes".

I regret that it took me six years to learn fallability.

I regret missed opportunities. It is so difficult to look back and realize that if I'd only had my eyes and heart open, my life could have taken a completely different path.

And now, words of wisdom about regret.

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. -Alexander Graham Bell

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. -Harriet Beecher Stowe

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. -Sydney J. Harris

All I can say...bring on longer days, they chase the melancholy away.