“You never know how long these times will last so we might as well make the most of them…”

A lot of people say this phrase. I’ve said this phrase to myself many times in my life, more so after I passed into my twenties. Maybe we say this to remind ourselves that regret sucks and to try to avoid it as much as we can… if not, at least that’s a good reason to say it. 

I don’t know why I think about the future so much. I must have been born this way. Because of this personal quality I seem to think about the significance of my life often (more often than I would even like to). I also think about death often. Not in a morbid way… more along the lines of “if I died soon would I be happy with the way I lived? would I be happy with how I treated people? what I accomplished? what I experienced?” 

The problem with regret is that a lot of times you don’t know it’s brewing until years have gone by and you realize that you could’ve done things differently. You could have, should have, would have… Retrospection is a biotch. 

I’ve always talked about going away to a monastery at some point in my life (I actually used to tell my mom that I would never get married and run away to be a nun and missionary in the jungles of South America when I grew up). It comes from that part of me that desires and desperately longs for absolute peace.

No wait scratch that, I take that back. I mean yes of course there’s the element of wanting peace but honestly I used to say that from a place of pain, and I wanted to run away from it. I think I thought back then that by running away and not being around a bunch of people I could avoid pain.. but everyone knows life will always have pain to some degree.

Lonliness is painful.. perhaps one of the most painful ailments of the human condition. One of the horrible things about lonliness is there is no criteria one can abide by to avoid it. Whether you’re alone sitting in silence and or when you’re surrounded by people.. it can still find you.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like admitting when I feel lonely. There’s something shameful about it. Maybe it stems from all those years of elementary school fighting about who has the most friends or maybe it’s ingrained in our social media crazed culture. Admitting loneliness is like admitting you don’t have any friends.. at least it feels this way sometimes. But this is not always accurate. Even if you have loads of friends you can still feel lonely (if this has never happened to you, a. you are either one of the happiest luckiest people on earth b. you are a robot c. you are a liar in denial).

It’s because if you let your soul, your real self, hang bare in the most vulnerable way, when you expose your humanity, your faults and your flaws without any guarantee another human being will understand or accept them.. it’s frightening.. when you’re not… it’s painful. deeply painful. There’s something about being human that desires connection, that desires understanding, that desires acceptance, complete acceptance.

There’s always that question “Is it better to be alone and guarantee avoidance of emotional lability and possible devastation, but in turn most certainly experience perhaps the duller yet throbbing ache of lonliness? Or simply, risk immense pain for immense joy?” I’m not sure I can take a side.. but what I do know is that often it’s the places of pain that are the most life-saving at times. Why? because it makes us desperate beyond our self sufficiency. (you can quote me someday Oprah)

Who knows.. maybe someday I will find myself sitting at the top of a mountain wearing a toga, but as an experiment to avoid regret somewhere down the road I’ve decided to take advantage of my hermit-like predispositions. 

Cause you know, you never know how long these times will last.