No regrets
What's in the past is in the past: Regret isn't worth it
Hi beautiful people and welcome to a new issue!
Before I get into it, I’ve added an audio file in case you’d prefer listening to the issue instead of reading; so happy reading or listening.
I had intended for this to be the last issue of 2022, but it has miraculously and by order of a condition I have called chronic procrastination turned into the first issue of 2023. So.. Happy New Year to you all! I hope this year brings you all that your heart and soul desire, be it peace, happiness, adventure, love etc. <3 I’m always rooting for you.
Today, I’d like to talk about regrets. I initially had different intentions for this issue, but I’ve caught myself mentioning the word regret a lot throughout the past couple of weeks, which brought me to thinking.
Let me take you a few years back when I had just graduated college. I went to college in the US and my home has always been Egypt. When I went to college, my intention had always been to come back home and work and live here, much to the surprise of a lot of Egyptians who perceived me as foolish for getting a window of opportunity to live abroad but choosing to come back to Egypt instead. Now, wide-eyed and not-yet-disillusioned college student and graduate Nolly thought she can change the world at that point. I thought that I would come home post graduation and work on reforming and transforming the media scene and changing people’s perceptions and behavior when it comes to the media. We would have a solid Egyptian media scene that people can rely on to get accurate, objective information, a right that all citizens should have as dictated by my American education, I thought.
When I came back home, I realized that things changed since I had entered college. Coupled with my confusion about whether I still wanted to pursue journalism or not, working as a journalist in Egypt didn’t seem too promising at that point. I tried for a hot second, but soon enough just gave up and started looking for other jobs.
Since then, life has taken me across different paths that have allowed me to interact and experience things that I had always dreamt of experiencing and work in a field I had always wanted to work in. Whether these experiences actually matched my dreams and expectations are a different story. They actually didn’t and I found myself questioning my purpose in life and career again, but I was still very grateful for the experiences I’d had and what I was exposed to. I didn’t have a single regret about having taken that path, having met the people I did, having had the experiences I had, etc. On the contrary. I actually felt very lucky and thought that 15-year-old Nolly would actually be psyched.
The Pact
At that point, I was holding on to a pact I had made with myself following graduation. By the time I graduated, I’d of course grown attached to college and to the US. Half of me actually wanted to stay and live in the US, at least for a bit. The other half still longed for home and that half ended up winning. I think it won because it was the easier thing to do and I was tired of moving from place to place every 3 months so I was craving stability and comfort.
That pact that I’d done with myself was that I would have no regrets pertaining my decision to come back to Egypt or to any other life decision I’d make because there’s absolutely no point in regretting having done something. These are the reasons:
It’s a decision that I’d taken after much deliberation.
It’s in the past.
There’s no way of changing it.
I may think it was wrong now, but the path that I took through that decision did contribute to my life’s story.
Now, I think that I have a pretty complex and contradicting personality. I often think of myself as a person with a positive outlook on life until I’m not and then I’m quite the negative Nancy. I’m not sure how people perceive me and maybe this is something that came with aging and disillusionment for me, but I feel like I have a way more negative outlook on life now compared to my college and post-college years. So it was normal for me during those post-college and still rosy years to say - with a voice full of hope- that I’ve never regretted my decision to come back to Egypt after college, on the contrary.
Enter COVID-19… First signs of regret start showing: I think at this point it was the nostalgia more than anything that hit me coupled with the fear, depression, uncertainty that we were all facing —> Negativity heightened.
And then enter hyperinflation in 2022 (two rounds) … The regret starts to sink in and I start voicing it. The economic situation takes a turn for the worse. We have no idea how bad it can get and just find it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel causing underlying feelings of anxiety —> Negativity levels fully charged.
How my mind works is when I catch a thought, I sometimes start obsessing over it. It’s similar to when you keep replaying a difficult conversation in your head over and over thinking of all the amazing comebacks you could’ve had instead of being tongue-tied in the moment. So typically, I’ve been obsessing over this feeling and thought of regret. This obsession lead to reflection and a check-in. I started having a conversation with myself to see where this regret is coming from, how it’s making me feel and what I need to do now.
And I remembered my pact. I don’t think I’d ever forgotten it, but in the face of a situation that seemed to be clouded in dimness, I just decided “The hell with it; I do regret coming back and I will acknowledge and embrace this feeling instead of suppressing it under toxic positivity.” Now, of course, this is a realization that I’m only making right now while I’m writing this. I wish I was this intuitive and insightful all the time.
Sitting with a negative feeling is good. You'll often read that to work through difficult feelings, you need to allow yourself to actually feel them and sit with them instead of trying to suppress them and sweep them under the rug. So I think all the wellness pages that I follow on IG did pay off because I’m retaining good information and applying them, albeit subconsciously.
The Realization
So here is the thing that I realized about regret: If you keep thinking of all the things you’ll regret you will always keep beating yourself up and it’s an awful feeling because it means that something is in the past and you’ll never be able to change it unless you have a Time Machine which is something scientists are yet to create, if ever. Regret, like a lot of other negative feelings, is a killer of spirit and it puts you in a downward spiral which depending on how far down that spiral you are, can be quite difficult to pull yourself out from. If you give regret the upper hand, you’ll be miserable and loathe yourself, your surroundings, your community, etc. forever.
Instead, we need to focus on the present moment and look at all that we have with gratitude. I know, it’s easier said than done but when you keep refocusing your attention whenever you’re having these difficult feelings on all the gifts you have in this life and all the privileges you’ve got, it puts things in perspective and life doesn’t seem too bleak after-all.
I believe that in life, we’re constantly given choices - whether there’s such a thing as fate in that serendipitous sense, I’m not quite sure of. I do believe however that our choices have consequences and these lead us on different journeys on which we get to meet people, have certain experiences that lead to another journey or destination. In my case, when I think about having taken a different path for example after graduation, I wouldn’t have met the people that I did, I wouldn’t have been friends with some amazing people I am privileged to have in my life now and I wouldn’t have learned some of the lessons I did and still am learning. I would’ve met different people and I’m sure I would’ve still learned other lessons, but that doesn’t make it better or worse. It’s just what it is: different. Nothing is fully good, nothing is fully bad. Life isn’t perfect - there are good moments and bad moments. As the saying goes: “You can’t have your cake and eat it.”
But while you have that cake in your hand, you need to make sure you enjoy it. You won’t be happy while you’re stuck in the past replaying what could’ve been and what you could’ve done.
Nostalgia is a double-edged sword that is quite dangerous because it sneaks up on you as this warm, fuzzy feeling that is reminiscent of what we think were the “better times” and before you know it, you’re yearning for these moments back and cursing your luck for being where you are or that things have changed. Well guess what, “change is the only constant,” as a Greek philosopher once said.
So own your life, own your choices and enjoy them. Train your eyes and mind to always see the good, acknowledge the bad but then shake it off and enjoy what you have.
I hope this gives you some good food for thought to lay a foundation to a very happy year and life for you. Until next time :)
Signed yours truly,
Nolly