Mistakes, Regrets and Control

(My first day in Lisbon, Portugal.) Mistakes, regret and control. These are three things that have haunted my life. I’ve regretted some things I have done, but, mostly, I regretted more things I did NOT do. I think I was so afraid of making some colossal life mistake that I chose a path where I believed I was most in control of my every day life as some sort of compensation that kept me stuck in eternal regret of what my life might be like if I released the controls and tried following a path that made me happy.

These three familiar shadows have crept up on me even as I travel, but at least now I’ve made life altering choices that allow me to navigate and play with them instead of letting them consume me.

Mistakes and regret appear in the “I should have” thoughts – I should have stayed longer in some places, I should have chosen a different dinner because this one sucked, I should know by now what I want to do, I should have stood up for myself so I don’t feel taken advantage of…The radically show up when I choose a destination and get caught between wanting to stay longer, and wanting to see as much of the world as I possibly can RIGHT NOW. I have some “DO IT RIGHT NOW OR ELSE!” voice in my head that likes to torment me each time I try to choose between four wonderful locations.

Fortress at Culloden where the Jacobite battle took place (read Outlander!). Part of a rather disappointing day in Inverness.

Recently I took a train to Inverness. It was one hour late, with frequent stopping, due to electrical work on the tracks. As I was walking to the train station, the bus to Inverness was still at the bus stop, about 7 minutes late. If I had run, I could have made it and I would have been to Inverness at the time I wanted. Once on the train, Mr Mistake told me I should have run for the bus. Ms. Regret told me my day would now be rushed and incomplete because I failed to make that bus.

I didn’t have a ticket for the train because some older Scottish man picked the exact time that there was a huge line to buy his monthly tickets, have a nice chat to the train ticket agent (there was only one at the station being so small) get an itinerary, and I think try to solve world peace, so there wasn’t time for the rest of us to get our tickets. Mr. Control was yapping at me to tell the man to hurry the fuck up and mind that there was a huge queue and he wasn’t the only person buying a ticket! Mr. Control was also considering, at every stop, whether there was a bus I could catch to get to Inverness more quickly

What I’ve learned through experience is that most every circumstance I initially regret or feel was a mistake, leads me to a lesson. I may not always like the lesson, but sometimes I need to learn to better stand up for myself, or communicate my needs to someone that can’t possibly know what they are. Other times, I end up better knowing what I want – like that time I went to Coimbra and learned, viscerally, that I wanted to be back in the small town I had left.

Control is a little tougher, but I try to work with him using some compassion or humor. Using the man at the train station as an example, isn’t it nice that a ticket agent is so concerned about helping an elderly man so completely and thoroughly? And, that she loves her job? At the end of the day, we can all buy tickets for the same price on board the train, so why get bent out of shape about it?

I’m still working with these parts of myself, and control is the only one that connects me to anger and helplessness which are harder to extinguish in the moment. I take comfort in at least being pretty quick to realize another lesson is on it’s way.