What would you do if one day, everything just up and disappeared? No sun, light, shadows. Real, unreal, impossible – gone. Nothing but the black before your mind’s eye, no one but the voice inside your head to keep you company. What would you miss, long for, cry for? What would you regret? Little things like not helping someone carry the groceries up her steps, about lying and saying you were busy? Would it even matter now? No. Big things like slamming the door last night instead of saying good night, leaving her standing there for who knows how long, with her hopes that you’d come back? Would that matter now, either? No. Would you regret the things you did, or instead the things you didn’t do. Didn’t try. And will never get to experience. Not because you couldn’t, but because you didn’t dare. Regret would be pointless: it would leave you selfish and cold, longing only for the things that you should have or could have or would have done, if you had only known. Regret would do you no favors.
So now, living each day while the day is still here, what can you change? How can you live so that, instead of being swamped with an ocean of regret, you could be satisfied with how you lived and why? To relieve inhibition if it is unnecessary, benign. To feel what you need, satisfy yourself and those around you, help and be helped. It becomes a life focused on not what is in your future, but what is in your now. How many people can you live for and love, and how many people can live and love with you. Regret becomes pointless and is soon washed away, replaced by fulfillment. Perhaps not in every moment but - the things you are able to, you do, and this knowledge keeps you satisfied. Keeps everyone satisfied. The little things, the big things – gratitude results. From strangers, lovers, and even, yourself.