Regret and Resolution

Last week marked the start of a New Year.  It's the time when we take some time to remember the past, when we begin to look ahead in the future, when we resolve to make changes.  I worked at a gym in high school and college, so I know how quickly many give up on their goals for the new year.  Every January, the workout room would be packed with people, and their numbers would dwindle until April, when the people who truly had a commitment to personal fitness were the only ones showing up.  They were the same faces I saw week after week, year after year.  My own resolutions tend to be financial.  This will be the year I don't get any library fines (already failed that one, with an overdue CD still in my car).  This will be the year we finally pay off our credit cards (despite being a recurring resolution, I KNOW 2014 is going to be the one!).  This will be the year I turn my little writing hobby into a paying job (although with four kids to take care of, actually finding time to finish that novel is going to be the biggest challenge).

Self Portrait

 

I think one of the purposes behind our New Year's Resolutions is to avoid regret.  So that this time next year, we can look back and say we didn't waste it.  This was the year that we turned things around, in our finances, in our health, in our relationships.  This was the year that I did things for me, instead of putting myself last.  But I don't regret putting other people's needs ahead of my own.  I don't regret all the times I make food for the kids, then realize hours later that I still haven't eaten.  I don't regret the path my life has taken, even if it means I'm somewhere different than I imagined.

Play doh creations

This is not to say I live without regrets.
I regret all the times I cared more about what other people thought than doing what I knew to be right.  Growing apart from friends whose opinion used to mean so much helped me see how much of my life had been lived to get someone else's approval.
I regret everything that I abandoned because it got hard.  I regret what remains unfinished.
I regret the narrow and shallow way I used to look at the world.  I regret the people I wrote off because they didn't seem good enough, able enough, cool enough.

Angry Birds: GO!

Something tells me 2014 is going to erase some of those regrets.  Not because I made a resolution on January 1st, but because my heart is being transformed daily. Because forgiveness and love are replacing achievement and regret.  Because I'm raising little children, which often means I'm learning way more than I'm teaching.  Because I've found a community, a Village, that links arms and carries the load and refuses to leave me behind. 

Not for Auld Lang Syne, but for a life without regret.  Happy 2014!