I’ve been thinking about something.
We spend a lot of time wondering about the roads we didn’t take. The job we didn’t accept. The place we didn’t move to. The relationship that ended. The opportunity we passed up. The trip we kept putting off.
It’s easy to look backward and convince ourselves that somewhere behind us was a better version of life waiting on a different decision. Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn’t.
That’s the problem with the roads we didn’t take. We get to imagine them without ever having to live with the potholes.
The path we chose is different.
We know every mistake. Every wrong turn. Every moment we wish we could do over. We know exactly where it let us down because we were actually there.
The other road gets to remain perfect in our imagination.
I think that’s why regret can be so convincing. It compares the messy reality of the life we lived with an imaginary version of the life we didn’t.
That isn’t a fair fight.
There are decisions I would make differently if I could go back. I suspect most of us have a few.
But changing one road changes everything that came after it. The people we met. The places we went. The families we built. The moments we never could have planned.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to trade all of that for a version of life that only exists in my head.
The rear view mirror is useful for seeing where the road has taken us. It can even help us understand why we ended up where we are.
But there will always be another road disappearing somewhere behind us that we never got to travel.
I’m learning to be okay with that.
Because the road I took brought me here, and there are people standing beside me today that I wouldn’t trade for any road I missed.