Do you feel ‘regret’? I hope if you are reading this, your answer is no. The reason I say that is because I ultimately believe that true regret should not, cannot come until you are dead or dying or someone you know is dead or dying. Death is the only event that can bring about true regret.

I regret that I could not keep my last relationship together, but that was not completely my fault and I learned a great deal from it. So is that true regret? No. True regret for me is giving up on a relationship early in my life because I was afraid of it, and the woman has since passed on. I can never go to her and tell her how I big a nit I was. I understood, as I was having my heart attack a couple of years ago, how much I would have regretted leaving my young daughters fatherless. How so very much I would have regretted should I have died, missing all the weddings, graduations, successes … so very much. But I didn’t die (whew), and I’m now living to make sure I don’t experience those regrets. I’m now trying to get my daughters married off by age 18! - Just KIDDING!

The point is, unless we are dead – we can always go and make things right. We don’t have to regret. Regret robs you of your positive energy and dampens your personal sense of integrity and honor. You may offset some of your regret with the lessons you learned. For example I learned not to fear relationships so much, so the regret of loosing that early one is not quite as painful as when she died. But time can make things difficult. The more time that passes the harder and harder it is to repair things. People pass out of your life as if they were dead… never let that happen – especially if there will be regret in your life because of it. Live one day at a time – with purpose, and hopefully you’ll never regret a single one of them.