Summer Edition: No Regrets in Week 6

     I regret eating the chocolate cake. At the time, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, and I forgot about the healthy eating I regularly attempt. I regret not calling the people in my life I care about more than I do. I regret not taking a chance earlier in my teaching career to really connect with my students; so often I put up a wall in those first years of teaching. I regret not writing down my grandmother's recipes before she passed away and cutting my own bangs in high school. I regret not taking a walk through the neighborhood with the boy I had a crush on in high school because I was too shy and nervous to do so when he asked me. I regret not taking a single history class in college and not putting up more of a fight to kiss the Blarney Stone in Ireland when I was forced to get back on the tour bus. I regret not writing down every memory in raising my own kids. I don't remember some of the smaller moments anymore. Some days, I regret introducing sugar into their diets (like tonight when they had chocolate cake for dessert and couldn't settle down for bed. I suppose I will always regret the chocolate cake). Sometimes, I regret the things I say. This week I decided to write a list of the things in life I reget; honestly, the list could go on and on. Yet, despite the laundry list of regrets I seem to constantly be hanging up on my clothesline of life, I have recognized the need to live a life of no regrets. How can I have such a list and simultaneously also have no regrets? It's because for everything that happens to me, for every choice I make, every action I take, there is a lesson and most certainly, there is gratitude. This is what I've been thinking about this week, and more than ever, this is how I know I should live my life.

     I spent the first part of this week in San Francisco. The city was beautiful and now one of my favorites. I loved how in one city you could mesh Chinatown, the San Francisco Bay, sprawling hills, crooked streets, Italian restaurants with food that tastes like the restaurant was lifted straight out of Italy itself, street performers, Ghiradelli chocolate, steep roads that burn your calves on every uphill step, cable cars, and one of the best bookstores you could ever imagine. One of the things that was important that I do on this trip is run across the Golden Gate Bridge. For some reason, my husband and I couldn't figure out the public transportation system in getting there, though. We kept getting on the wrong bus, headed in the wrong direction. I know I regret the attitude I assumed as we made the attempt to get to the bridge. At one point, I told my husband that we should just forget it. I didn't need to run over a bridge. I resolved that I was going to have to be okay without the experience. So, I simply looked at my husband and said, "Let's just do something else."
   
     He stopped, looked at me sternly, and said, "We are going over that bridge!" After two hours of bus musical chairs and moments of  European Vacation's "Big Ben, Parliament," we got to the bridge. It was windy. It was foggy. We couldn't even see the bay right in front of us. To most that would have been utter disappointment. Yet, I ran and walked across that bridge. It was, by far, one of the most exhiliarating feelings I have ever experienced. I kept thinking all day that I was going to give up on that moment. I was going to forget about it because of a few small (okay, large) transportation delays. What I would have regretted had I not taken a risk and chance in the moment.

     While we were in California, the great irony there was that I kept seeing Taco Bells. For those of you who know my distaste for the establishment, the irony in this was unsettling. I began to photograph them, as I was here for a photography grant. I now have an entire Taco Bell collection:

As we were leaving a resaturant one evening, a homeless woman was sitting outside of a Taco Bell adjacent to our restaurant. She mumbled something that I didn't quite hear. I had a hard time in San Francisco seeing all of the homeless people. I always do whenever I go to a big city. So, seeing this woman was no different. When we finally got on the bus (this time the right one as we had figured out the transportation system), I asked my husband what he thought she had said. "She was begging for a taco," he said. It really got to me, and I wanted to get off that bus at that very moment and patronize the restaurant I despise so much just to feed that homeless woman, but we were long gone away from her by that point. Two days later, a man's sign caught my eye. He didn't have a sign that said "homeless" or "help." Just a sign that said "desperate times." If there was a Taco Bell on the corner, I would have bought him a taco. Instead, I took the money that I would have spent on that woman's tacos and gave it to him. You see, a lot of that trip I spent thinking about that woman, grumbling for a taco. I regretted ever making fun of Taco Bell, of defending my stance that it is not "real" food. To some, perhaps that meal is everything. How utterly selfish I started to feel. However, because I learned from this experience, some man who is experiencing "desperate times" suddeny had a smile on his face as I handed him the money. He was gracious, and tears filled his eyes. Don't get me wrong; Taco Bell is still far from my favorite restaurant, but I now will think about that mumbling woman on the streets of California more when I do frequent the restaurant. To those of you I relentlessly argued with regarding the establishment, you may be happy to know that I've softened just a bit on my opinion of Taco Bell. Perhaps this newfound opinion will bring me gratitude when I am outvoted by my kids and am forced to eat there.

     I also found myself at Water Country in Williamsburg one day this week. I am not a water ride person. Who am I kidding? I am not a ride person. I used to be. I'm not sure what happened between the age of 18 and 42 that brought me to the place where I am today. I think I enjoy watching my own kids' expressions while they are on the rides more than experiencing the rides myself now. I did go on one ride that held all five of us in a raft, thrusting us down enclosed tubes in the dark. I screamed until my throat hurt as my son told me several times to "Get over it, Mom!" After the ride, I asked him what he wanted me to get over. "Get over your fear, Mom," he said while laughing. "It's not that scary!" I'm glad I faced my fears and went on a ride I probably would have sat out of otherwise. There were no regets.

     Still, I don't feel myself at a water park. I even have a hard time being lazy on the Lazy River, as I am one of those people who is constantly on the go or doing something. I held on tightly to the inner tube, sitting up straight. I finished the loop, got out, and watched my kids go around one more time. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a gentleman on a two person raft. He was completely relaxed, arms hanging off the sides. I couldn't see his face until the tube turned around, and I recognized the man on that raft. My husband. I laughed at the sight, wishing I could feel that same relaxed feeling, regretting how sometimes I take life too seriously.

     So, this week, I've been thinking about how to live a life without regrets. What does that mean? It's one thing to say something like "No regrets," but it's another to actually practice it's meaning. There's no denying it; everyone has regrets. Yet, if you are someone who realizes that everything we experience shapes who we are today, there's never a reason to regret anything. I started to think about how I could live a life without regrets this week. For one, I have started to tell more people that I care about in my life how I truly feel about them. Yet, I've also realized I can do things like trust my instincts, take life less seriously, and take more risks. I have realized that I can turn the failures in my life (like the inability to navigate through San Francisco's transportation system) into bridges that connect my failures to lessons. I've realized the need for me to be myself. I'm never going to be lazy enough to be on the Lazy River, and Taco Bell will probably never be appealing to me. However, I can look at life a little less seriously; I can embrace Taco Bell every once in awhile

     Yet, the experience this week that has forced me to really reflect on living this life of no regrets was attending the celebration of life of my friend's husband. Here was a man who lived every day in strong faith without regrets. I read about that in the newspaper; I listened to the beautiful words of my friend as she bravely and beautifully spoke at her husband's funeral. I heard it in the words of the police officers at the funeral as well as his friends and other family memebers. I heard it in the music his daughter and his best friends played. Yet, I knew he lived life this way just in the first time meeting this man. He had come to Back to School Night his daughter's freshman year. His wife--my colleague--could not come because she was hosting her own set of parents in her classroom down the hall. There was something about him that was different from the other parents in the room who just had questions about pre-IB ninth grade English; he had a presence about him that radiated through him--he was so very full of life. You could just tell that he lived a life of no regrets. And what I've learned most through this tragedy his family is experiencing is to live my life this way--a life without regrets. I need to stop what I'm doing and live in the moment. I need to take risks. I need to have gratitude. That's how my wonderful friend's husband lived. The loss he leaves behind in his family is beyond tragic and beyond words. Yet, he also has left a life that has taught so many--including myself--the importance of no regrets.

      Regret undoubtedly makes us human. It's one of those things that is easy to wear but rather difficult to take off. You try and try to unzip it, unbutton it, pull it over your head, but quite often it remains. The only way to remove it is to accept the lessons regret provides and act in gratitude for such lessons. Yet sometimes that acceptance is so hard. I've been listening to the song "Let It Be" by the Beatles a lot this week. I'm not sure why, but it keeps popping up on the radio, on my playlist while running, even in two stores where I've shopped. Paul McCartney wrote the song about his mother Mary who died when he was 14. McCartney's mother came to him in a dream ten years later when he was stressed, uttering the three simple words "Let it be." He took her words and put them to music. I can't help but think that sometimes  we have to just learn from our life experiences instead of regretting them. We need to ride that water slide and recognize the need to not take life so seriously--even while on the Lazy River. We need to not give up on that bridge and recognize that someone else's treasure (Taco Bell) may not necessarily be ours, but that's okay. Sometimes we just have to "Let It Be" and live a life of no regrets.