Life is too short to live in fear and regret

Writing this post feels like I’m stepping back into a time capsule. So much time has passed since I last posted here, yet it still feels like nothing changed as I make my return.

It’s as if I simply pressed pause, and the world in which I let my mind and my thoughts roam free, where my biggest questions in life once lay, where I explored the ideas of the past, and hoped to find solutions to the future. It’s all right here.

As I read through things I once wrote, it doesn’t feel like I wrote them, but in a way, I can’t imagine any one else but myself to have authored every single word.

Like I said, it’s like I stepped into a world once forgotten.

But I’ve decided to come back to this domain of mine to continue to record my life, my thoughts, and hopefully little portals into the past that I can look upon years from now. The thing is, as I mentioned, the writings I wrote, I knew the kind of person I was when I wrote them, and it’s an odd thing, but that person…he doesn’t exist anymore.

He was younger, more naive, less humble, and less wise. If I were to meet him, I know what he would have said were I to ask him certain questions of life. But I would also wonder what his reaction would be if I were to tell him all the things he was going to experience in the coming years.

But I’m not writing this post to reminisce on the past. I only bring the points above up because I was afraid to make this post.

It feels like, by making this post, I’m disturbing a museum of writings preserved in time, and by coming back after years, I’m tainting it in a way. But that’s not my intention.

I want to show anyone who is reading, including my future self, how we’ve changed, but also, how we’ve stayed the same. And there is one thing I’ve never forgotten:

Life is too short to live in fear and regret.

Less than 5 months ago from the date of writing this post, my son was born. And around 12 months ago we discovered my now wife was pregnant.

It was one of the scariest and most emotional moments of my life. It literally changed the entire trajectory in a single discovery.

My wife cried, I cried, and overall, it was a time of a lot of fear and anxiety.

As our son came closer to his due date, many of those feelings of fear became excitement. And the anxiety, it became curious wonder.

Then it happened. The day came. He was here.

One day I’m going to work, the next day I have a human being sofly sleeping on my chest as he lays there experiencing the world for the first time.

Words cannot describe how it felt. The thing is, I don’t even know if I knew what to feel in those moments. Only now, months after he was born, can I look back and appreciate all that happened. I can fully relive the moments in my head as I laugh, cry, and smile trying to recount every little detail of the day.

But now we’re here: almost 5 months later, and life has become….difficult.

Only now is it starting to sink in, my life has changed. Forever.

Whatever I thought I was going to be doing at this moment, whatever life I thought I was going to be live right now, it will never exist. So why do we sometimes fixate on a life that was never ours?

We tell ourselves, “if only I had done this, my life would be so much different”.

But we then get angry at ourselves for the situation we’re in, oftentimes missing the moment we’re in right now.

And this is a hard lesson that, as a new parent, I’ve had to learn.

I will say, and this is with full honesty, having our son has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It leaves every day with wonder and a feeling of “What are we going to do today?” It puts your life into perspective that you’re not living for yourself anymore, but rather, you have a family to provide for. It injects meaning into the small moments as you commute to work. It gives you indescribable joy as you wake up to see your little one’s precious smile that has pure innocence and excitement as you carefully pick them up and give them a hug.

But ask any parent….having a child is hard, and not every day is bright and shiny. There are sleepless nights and days where you just want to cry with your baby as you don’t know how to comfort them.

You begin to feel anxious, frustrated, and overwhelmed. And almost all of us wonder, was I really ready for a child?

We begin to think of our life before parenthood. We think of our life without these responsibilities. Some of us even let the thought of regret seep into our minds. We hate ourselves for it, but we can’t ignore the fact the thought is there.

It’s a dark secret we often hold close because it’s not something a parent is allowed to say. Also, we know that whatever hardship we’re going through is likely temporary. We know it will get better.

A sad truth of all of this is we often don’t fully appreciate these moments until much later. And at that point, we can never relive that moment again. We forget about all the sleepless nights and overwhelming cries, but rather remember the way we held our sons and daughters in our arms as he or she quietly fell asleep.

We tell ourselves “if only I could hold you as a baby one more time” as we drop our kids off at school, attend their graduation, and pack their bags as they go off to college.

And all of this made me realize. When my son is crying because his teeth hurt, or he just threw up on me, I’m no longer angry or overwhelmed. These are moments that he’ll never know we had together, he’ll never remember, but will be with me forever.

I don’t want to look back and think of how I shouldn’t have been angry at person who can’t control themselves. I want to remember myself as being the person who was kind and patient.

I no longer care about the life I could have had, but rather want to focus on the life I can create.

This doesn’t just apply to new parents but to everyone who is reading this. So stop living in fear, and focus on what you can do today that will help you create your better tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.