All is Not Forgotten, by Wendy Walker

He said he felt uncomfortable observing them in this intimate moment, though he did not look away. He said he was taken aback by Tom’s weakness and Charlotte’s strength, though anyone with a less simplistic understanding of human emotion would understand that it was actually quite the opposite. It requires far more strength to experience emotion than to suppress it.

 _______________________________________________________________________________ 

With youth comes the inability to know what’s going to happen as a decision is played out. It is one of the greatest shames of the human experience that by the time we know how to conduct ourselves in an appropriate manner, there’s little conducting left to do. _______________________________________________________________________________

 It is our destiny to re-create our childhoods in our adult lives. Then we wonder why we’re not happy. _______________________________________________________________________________

 I know I belabor this analogy, but I have come to see these teenage years as a construction project. I tell my young patients, and my own children, that this is not their life. Not yet. What they are doing now is building a house. It is a house they will have to live in for the rest of their lives, so they’d better get it right. They will be able to remodel, redecorate, and repair. But they can never rebuild. Everything they put into this house, every emotional scar from a bad relationship, every sexual perversion they give in to, every opportunity they secure for themselves, every drug they allow to interrupt the maturing of their growing brains, will be forever in the foundation of that house. _______________________________________________________________________________ 

All of life is just a state of mind, isn’t it? We are all just walking slowly to our graves, trying not to think about it, trying to find meaning, to pass the time pleasantly. Look around you. Everyone you can see will be dead in one hundred years: You. Your spouse. Your child. Your friends. The people who love you. The people who hate you. Terrorists in the Middle East. The politicians raising your taxes and making bad policies. The teacher who gave your son a bad grade. The couple who didn’t invite you to a dinner. I have gone down this mental path when things have upset me. I find it puts life in perspective. It can be a good thing, to remember that there is very little that truly matters. A bad grade. A dumb politician. A social slight. Unfortunately, there are things that do matter. Things that can ruin what little time we have here. Things that cannot be done over or remedied. These are the things that we regret. And regret is more devious than guilt. It is more corrosive than envy. And it is more powerful than fear.