by Lena Davis

Created on: June 13, 2009

Is it possible to live without regrets? I pondered deeply before I answered because I want to leave the reader with feelings of hope. I believe we can choose to live our lives without regret with the resolution to grow from our reflections. I can remember playing childhood games which allowed for a do-over if a mistake was made at a first or even sometimes a second attempt at playing the game.The more I played the game, the better I became at mastering the skills of the game, and do-overs were no longer looked to for a safety net. Mastering the challenge became more fulfilling. Life is not like childhood games; many times we do not have the opportunity to do things over again, and it may cause some heartache and disappointment at the time. However, this should only be for a season, not a lifetime. We can look to the past only momentarily to help us in the present; we can use our experience to set goals and to assess plans.

We cannot dwell in or live for the past, even if those were the good old days. There are things we must learn and do in the present. As we go along in the game in life, we learn to master the skills it takes to survive, and some of it comes by example, but much of it comes by making mistakes. We have to learn how to navigate, negotiate and initiate. Sometimes we have poor examples; sometimes we get lost; sometimes we strike a bad, deal and sometimes we fail to grasp the opportunities that are just yearning for us to take hold of them. Through it all, there are valuable lessons to learn, but if we are only measuring ourselves by what we have failed to do in the past, our gaze will fall short. We will not be able to see what's coming over the horizon. Our lives will not be filled with hopeful anticipation but with prolonged negativity.

Sometimes people cannot get to the present for living in the past, and this to me is not living with quality of life or abundance of life. It is not focusing all of one's energy in the direction to where one wishes to go in life, onward and upward. Someone once said, "What's the only difference between a rut and a grave? A rut is six inches and a grave is six feet." Spinning the wheels of the mind dwelling on the faults, mistakes, missed opportunities, misunderstandings and sins of the past places one in a rut which soon turns into a grave in which one's talents, dreams and hopes are buried, and soon after, the individual who has been stuck bemoaning the past. Life's blunders help to shape us into who we

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