Regret: Past, Present, Future

Regret is a funny thing.  You try your best in life to avoid it but sometimes it's the hard things in life that teach us the most, which makes you wonder, if given a chance, how many of us would do things differently?

For some, regret is the very thing that helps us push past our fear and move into the future.  For others it's the thing that allows us to re-explore our past.  At its best regret can be the catalyst for new beginnings where anything and everything is still possible.

The Wizard of Oz

Movie magic.  There's something about sitting in a dark theater that lets you escape the reality of your own life and live in the fantasy of someone else's story.  What if the cameras were turned on you?  In the movie of your life do you like what you see? 

We all love to lose ourselves in a good movie.  When I was a girl I loved the Wizard of Oz especially the moment when Dorothy opens the door into that fantastic world.  But once Dorothy appreciated how bright and beautiful everything was, she realized she had a bit of a mess on her hands.  One of the classic examples of "be careful what you wish for".  Spend five minutes in a fantasy and you just might find yourself wishing your old life back.  We miss what's right in front of us when we're busy looking over the rainbow.  Sometimes it takes stepping into someone else's world to realize how much you love the life you have.  No matter how magical the movies are, at the end of the day there's no place like home. 

Dream a Little Dream

We all remember the bedtime stories of our childhood.  The shoe fits Cinderella.  The frog turns into a prince.  Sleeping Beauty is awakened with a kiss.  Once upon a time and then they lived happily ever after.  Fairy tales - the stories of dreams.  The problem with fairy tales is that they don't come true.  It's the other stories, the ones that begin with dark and stormy nights and end in the unspeakable.  It's the nightmares that always seem to be reality.  The person that invented the phrase "happily ever after" should have their ass kicked!

Once upon a time, happily ever after - the stories we tell are the stuff of dreams that don't come true.  Reality is much stormier, much murkier, much scarier.  Reality - it's so much more interesting than living happily ever after for it's the obstacle of hallucinations.