Sliding Doors

Have you ever made a decision that you regret? Sure, you have. We all have. The real question should be why do you regret it? All things considered, do you honestly believe that you made a wrong decision, or is it just that your perception of the outcome is that you are worse off now than the person on the other end of that move? Hindsight is 20/20….in contacts LOL. I say that because in retrospect, a lot of things seem clear, but not enough is taken into consideration when looking back. The perspective is based on assumptions – a PERCEPTION of reality – which isn’t always accurate.

For instance… lets say you break up with somebody. Fast-forward five years and you haven’t had a real relationship since – at least none that wouldn’t pale in comparison – and its not because you aren’t looking or making yourself available, you just cant seem to find the right person. The other person, however, at least APPEARING to have rectified the issues that you essentially left them over, is now in a relationship, which they believe will likely culminate in marriage. A situation like this can lead the dumper to feel like they made a mistake, maybe should have been more patient and now look, this person “is all happy and I aint.”

Well…. I wont state the obvious right now, I’ll come back to it LOL. What I’d like to know is why do people always assume that they’d be happy if they had gone the other way? How do they know making a different choice wouldn’t have made them even worse off and how do you know you are far enough ahead to be looking back? Most things take a while to shake out. Its an extreme case, but I have a friend who, TEN YEARS AGO, swore she shoulda never stopped seeing this dude she was seeing back when we were in jr. high school, which was ten years before that. Just this past January, dude was indicted in the murder of his ex-girlfriend. See what I’m sayin? If the decision you made was the right thing for you AT THE TIME, be good with it. As years go by, and your station changes, its easy to forget what you were feeling and why you felt you needed to do it. But just like if you have ever gone back down a road with somebody from your past, if you could do it over, you’d likely be reminded of why you walked away the first time, and feel better about doing what you did.

Another point, to the ladies specifically: so you got this guy all up in your head, telling you he loves you and wishing things could be different. Oh yeah? Well…. Make them different. (I’m gonna go to med school and become a surgeon in the meantime, while you wait on him to leave home – it’ll be at LEAST that long LOL) “I cant help it that I still love you, you shoulda been the one.” Mm. Ok. Tell me something…. Is it better to be the one he “cant help but still be in love with,” and watch him go home to his wife, or is it better to be the wife, at home, making dinner for the love of her life, who’s, at the same moment, across town telling another woman she’s the love of his? Can you honestly say either position is one you’d want to be in? But at least one of them can fairly easily be abandoned. That man is the WIFE’s problem. YOU can keep it moving. Isn’t there something to be said for that?

There’s this movie I like called Sliding Doors. I thought I blogged about it before but I couldn’t find it, so I guess I didn’t. The movie stars Gwyneth Paltrow, and if you have ever said to yourself “I wonder what my life would be like if I never made that decision,” you should watch it. She’s running late for a train. She got in the doors at the last second before they closed, and made it home in time to find her husband in bed with another woman. Then she manages to hit her head on something and her life is rewound to the train station, where this time she misses the train, and therefore missed the woman at home in her bed. The movie explores both paths, showing how things would be different, but in the end, the two paths converge, and she ends up in the same place. So the point of it, it would seem, was no matter what turns you take on the voyage, you still end up where youre meant to be. My personal opinion is that there is something to that. So don’t spend the whole trip dwelling on one choice you made. There are plenty of choices ahead of you that still need making. Focus on those. More importantly, even if you did fuck something up, if it cant be corrected, there is no point in holding yourself prisoner to it. You are still entitled to be happy and you shouldn’t let your happiness hinge on whats going on with somebody else. Furthermore, (back to the obvious) not everyone who appears happy is. Anything can look peachy when youre on the outside looking in, but if there is one thing life has taught me its that even IF the grass is greener on the other side, the water bill is higher and there’s a lotta SHIT involved LOL. So be careful of who and what you envy. If some of those people had their choice, they’d probably switch places with you.