I have a few...

How often we wish we could take something back; a word, a day...a relationship. I wonder, though, if it were possible, regardless of the stretch of one's imagination, that if we could actually take something back, how much of our life would we rewind and erase? How much of our life would we leave as it is? How much would we consider perfect enough to not 'do over'?

Regrets are hard to live with, but they are how we learn. We can live in the past, regreting something we did or an action we took...or we can see how it brought us to where we are. The older we get, the more things we'll have in our regret column...the hard part is forgiving ouselves and not only moving on but learning from the mistakes we've made. Experience comes with a price, but's it's a price worth paying.

There are words I wish I could take back, but what they've taught me is to think before I speak. There are years I wish I could do over, but what they've given me is experience to share with others and the ability to understand someone's mistakes rather than judge them.

I regret the night I went to bed early in December of 1990 and missed my mother's phone call. She passed away that night in her sleep. She'd spoke with my husband that night and told him to tell me she loved me. I regret missing her call that night, but what it taught me was to never let people go without knowing how I feel about them.

We tell our children to learn from their mistakes, yet we begrudge ourselves of the experience to learn from ours...and we judge others by the mistakes they make, forgetting that we, too, have made mistakes that we'd rather keep hidden. We can let regrets rule our lives, allowing ourselves to live in the past, or we can lay them down...all of them, and build the foundation of who we are upon them.

If for no other reason than it's one of my all time favorite songs (and that I've been playing the cd, Romanza, over and over recently), I'm adding the video, Miserere, with Zucchero Fornaciari (the author) and Andrea Bocelli, whom I love. But, as it happens, the song relates to my feelings in this post. I'll post the english translation below the song.

Miserere
----------------------------

Wretched, wretched
Wretched, wretched me
But I toast life!
What a mystery my life is
what a mystery!
I am a sinner from the year 80,000
A liar!
But where am I, what am I doing
How do I live
I live in the soul of the world
Lost in the depths of life

Wretched, wretched me
But I toast life!

I am the saint who betrayed you
when you were alone
I live elsewhere and observe the world
from the sky
and I see the sea and the forests,
I see myself...
I live in the soul of the world
lost in the depths of life!

Wretched, wretched me,
but I toast life!

If there is a night dark enough
To hide me, to hide me,
If there is a light, a hope
A magnificent sun that shines
Inside of me
Give me the joy to live
that is not yet there.

Wretched, wretched me
That joy to live
that perhaps, is not yet there.