Regret

I think I have two major personality weaknesses that are holding me down, and I think they're tied together.

1. Lack of foresight. I have an amazing ability to ignore potentially huge moments in my life, and a criminal misunderstanding of the significance of certain moments.

2. In spite of #1 (or maybe because of it), I have an unnatural obsession with those moments after I comprehend how massive they were.

I've been thinking a lot about a moment in my life that didn't seem that big at the time. It was just a normal night, and nothing special happened. And, of course, that's the problem and that's the point. Maybe something was supposed to happen, and now I sit and torture myself with questions of "what if?"

And I start to ask myself questions. If this singular moment was so important, why didn't I realize it at the time? And then I ask myself another question: did I know it was important and choose to do nothing about it?

As most of you probably know, my memory is pretty screwed up. I don't remember certain things, and I have a problem holding on to certain memories. But this memory I'm talking about is in pristine condition. I can remember exactly where I was, and I can remember a significant chunk of it. I remember more of it than I remember tons of other things, and it makes me wonder if I recorded that moment for a reason. If my "memory gatekeeper" somehow knew to log this memory in the data banks for future use.

And that's when I think that maybe I understood completely what I was doing. But then again, I don't really think I'm that much of a self-defeating person. Or am I?

Either way, whether I understood the significance or not, I should be learning from these mistakes. For as much as I beat myself up about things that I do or don't do...for as much as I beg a higher power to place me back into those moments to give myself a chance to make things right...for as much as I've dreamed for a time machine or some kind of "Butterfly Effect"-like power to go back and alter a moment in history...you'd think that I'd be doing a better job of looking out for the next bit moment in my life.

But I find myself, relatively consistently, ignoring the moment as it's happening. And maybe it comes down to the fact that I just don't see things clearly when they're happening. That emotion (call it fear, anxiety, or whatever you like) gets in the way of realizing what's going on.

I don't take a lot of risks because I fear the consequences of failure. And, I believe, until I start discovering the significance of the moment, I'm going to continue to "fly" in the moment and "fight" with myself later.

I need to learn from my mistakes. To do my best to gain from the past instead of just mourning it. Otherwise, the yesterday's mistakes are going to be the same ones I'm going to repeat tomorrow. And considering that they're ruining today, I just can't afford to let that happen.