I don’t think I agree with Ira Glass on his opinion of regrets, or his distaste of the song My Way, which happens to be one of my favorites. I’ve regretted a lot of things in life, the things I’ve lost (oh that’s a long list of electronics), the chances I didn’t take, the people I’ve hurt, the words I didn’t say. But then again, most of these just turned into lessons, and there are really too few that I would ever mention to someone else. Perhaps I just learned the art of synthetic happiness at an early age. After all, why dwell on the things we can no longer change when the only path is forward? Or maybe I’m still having trouble with this whole vulnerability thing and just don’t want to admit that I may have screwed up my life somehow and this isn’t where I want to be. But I’m not sure if I really know where I want to be or if I ended up there I would really be happy. So I can think of my bad decisions in life as regrets, or I can just think of them as part of life.
But it wasn’t really all this talk about regrets that made me want to write. During this episode of This American Life the little girl in the story read something her sister wrote as part of a Girl Scouts exercise. I don’t think it’s something she would ever forget, even if she tried. And I thought, what would I write down at this moment, if I could be as truthful as a four year old child? What would you write?
I wonder why
I wonder if
I wonder whether
I wonder how come
I wonder where
And in case you are wondering, this rendition of My Way is a scene from one of my favorite movies, Swallowtail (スワロウテイル).
I wonder why I’m alone
I wonder if I’m not good enough
I wonder whether I’ll ever be good enough
I wonder how come they never want to stay
I wonder where I’ll end up when I’m old and gray
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