From Laments to Lessons

As someone who used to carry around a cumbersome load of them, regrets seem to be typically reserved for those who have not reconciled with their past and thus may have an awareness of, let alone peace with their present. After suffering from what my shrink then called, self-attacking thoughts and even more brutal self talk for years that thankfully have been reframed casually using many cognitive behavioral techniques learned along the way, this virulent vortex of self-pity (and when it wasn’t self-pity it was straight up self-hate) has provided background for a portrait that’s still in the works.

After spending nearly a decade trying to make sense of love and loss (aside from the romantic loves lost, other equally chilling losses included the child that never was, my grandfather, my grandmother, my mind, and last and least importantly of all my money/material possessions), it recently came to me to frame it from a more detached, objective perspective. That’s to say nothing that happened was anyone else’s fault, and it certainly was not my own to be personalized. The perceived failures were once a bastard whose paternity I claimed fully and whose rearing fell squarely and upon my shoulders. Not to say that blame should be ducked and dodged, but if we are to share the credit for our successes, an equal distribution of its opposite seems appropriate. In either case, I’ve moved away from value ascription across any number of domains and learned to view my definition of success as just that, mine.

Fault is a weighty burden to bear, and certainly not one conducive to maintaining any semblance of mental hygiene when embraced and accepted solely. Now instead of attaching blame or even searching for reasons why, my attitude, as it concerns anything, ranging, from the minor to the major, “this, that, or the third may have happened, now what am I going to do about it.” This solution oriented, value-neutral approach has been good for me as it centers around my ability (or agency, if you prefer the academic term) to be the architect of my own destiny, in the immediate, eventual, and ultimate time frames.