Pardon our ramblings: regrets

No, I'm not buying Beatles Rock Band today. I'm probably not buying it at all.

I've got Guitar Hero III for the PS2, and I haven't played that in like six months. I got through the easy setting and like four songs of medium and just don't have any interest in going further. So I'm thinking that looking to buy another game in the series wouldn't be a great decision.

I doubt it would be a decision that I would regret or anything, just not something that I feel the need to do.

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It's those regrets that I'm here to ramble about today.

See, the thing is that I don't have them.

I just don't.

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I know there are people who look back on their roads taken or not taken and wish that they'd headed down the other path, but I'm just not one of those folks.

I'm happy with where my life is, and I know tat where I am - who I am - is a compilation of every single decision that I've made to get me here. If any one of those had been made differently - a street crossing made instead of avoided, a word spoken when I instead chose to stay silent (or, more likely, the opposite), a cliff jumped from - then something would have changed.

The change might've been minor, changing a memory or a single neural connection in my brain. The change might've been significant, having never gone to Scotland, having never landed at Princeton, getting hit by a bus. Even the minor things, however, could have lead to a hundred different changes down the road, and I could've been an entirely different person leading an entirely different life.

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Sure, there are things that I look back on and kind of wish that I would have done differently because I think I took the road less entertaining or less fun, but I don't in any way actually regret my decisions.

One that pops into my brain was my decision - not really a conscious one - as I was in Scotland to date two women, both Americans in the same program that I was on.

Oh, I enjoyed my time spent with both of them - one relationship ended by me (badly handled, I'm sorry to say) and one ended by the girl (not The Girl, just the girl I was dating at the time). I have no regrets about the relationships themselves - maybe wish I would've been a little quicker and more decisive about ending the second one - just kind of wish that I'd gotten to know a lady who didn't have the same background as I did.

Plus, now I have no clue what the Scottish lassies do to woo a man.

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There are a couple of other - non-Scottish - incidents when I look back on them and realize that I just might not have noticed that I had a different route to take.

There was a time in high school when I went with ColdNorthGamer to a girl's house, a friend of a girl that he was then starting to date. I knew it was going to be just the four of us - Gamer and his girl, me and a volleyball player from a neighboring school. In retrospect, I realize that I probably was supposed to be some sort of wingman. I have to admit that I had no clue at the time. Not that I've got much game now, but at least I'd like to think that I could entertain te girl a little more directly than I did that night watching videos.

A similar situation happened once at Wabash - weirdly sort of involving Gamer again. It was my freshman year, and none of my friends had joined me in choosing to matriculate to Wabash. A number of them had chosen, however, to attend Purdue, and a group of them had found a way to borrow a car and drive down to see me in Crawfordsville - or they were driving back from somewhere or something. Either way, I was hanging out at an all-campus party waiting for my friends.

As I was waiting, a trio of girls - rare enough on an all-male campus - came up to me asking if I could direct them to the Lambda Chi house, my fraternity house. I happily obliged, stepping to the doorway and pointing down the street toward our house. One of the girls asked if I'd be willing to walk them that way, it being dark or something - memory fades, admittedly. I declined because I was where my friends were supposed to meet me.

When I mentioned the story to one of the upperclassmen the next day, they pointed out that I just might have had a different road to take there, that perhaps I again hadn't noticed that an opportunity might have been presenting itself to me and I'd just let the doorway slip right on by.

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I have a number of other times where I made decisions and had to live with the pretty unpleasant consequences of those decisions, but I don't have any regrets on the decisions that I made. If I'd made them any differently, it's entirely possible that all of my roads from that point forward would've been taken in some sort of alternate universe, one in which I'd attended IU instead of Wabash, parked my car in the garage instead of on the driveway, waited a day to drive back for senior comprehensive exams, not hit Zack Bonifer with a lunchbox in fifth grade, simply closed Brent's email.

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One thing I certainly don't regret is starting this blog.

That was a good decision.