Regrets, I've had a few

I don't even like Sinatra, or the song.  But when a Facebook (and old school) friend posted a Guardian article about the five top dying regrets, I found myself quoting "My Way."  As with many things, it was a serendipitous posting, fitting in with my current thoughts.

Minor Geminid digression:
I once heard that the reason you notice things is because of the filtering part of your brain.  (Gotta get something out of those management classes!) Without the filter, you'd go into sensory overload.  But, once you've created a pathway, the filter lets things through.  Agatha Christie mentions this phenomenon in They Came to Baghdad.  It's universal:  once something grabs your attention, you see it everywhere.

So, I'm thinking about regrets?  Yes.  This is not the same as regretting things. It fits into my personal work:  I've been going over my assignment from my therapist.  What do I want, need, deserve?  It is significant, I think, that in my previous post I turned Deserve into Desire.  Apparently, I don't want to think about what I deserve.  Desire is need, so is want, and I turned the exercise into a puzzle:  how do I differentiate?   I spun my wheels, trying to fit my list into increasingly abstruse categories.  Is healthy food a need or a want?  What about love? Clearly a desire....but is it also a need?  What about meaningful work?  friends? safety?

Here's the list I dictated into the phone while sitting on a bench outside during a long break:  food, lodging, meaningful work, safety, security, goals, creativity, love, friends, serenity, connections, music, writing, books, exercise, amusement, sleep, healthy food, wine, sweetness, laughter, joy, fun, a lover, purpose, stability, money, peace, someone to take care of me, strength, competence, self-confidence, time, adventure, activity, health, wisdom.

Then I started spinning my wheels further, analyzing the order in which I thought of things.  Does it indicate my priorities?  Or something deeper?  I observed that I started with the concrete, included a lot of my Shoulds, and smuggled in only a few emotional needs.  And that I followed "someone to take care of me" with a bunch of self-sufficient qualities.  It's a disjointed, contradictory list.

Even when I'm trying to figure out how I got into this emotional pickle, even when I'm trying to dig my way out, I seem unable to focus on the sweet, joyous things in life:  love, friends, happiness.   It's no accident that the Declaration of Independence does not talk about basic needs (food, lodging, work).  It talks about life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.  It does not attempt to define happiness or the way it is pursued.   Why can't my own declaration go in that direction?

And this is where regret comes in.  There I was, sitting on a bench outside the Balloon Museum, facing my beloved Sandias, watching the play of New Mexican light over the mountain, following the clouds in the endless sky.  Why wasn't I walking, taking photos, basking in the beauty around me and rejoicing in the health of my body?  Why was I focusing inward instead of outward?  Why didn't I do something useful with my life, the little bits and pieces that I have to work with?

The big regret is waste:  waste of time, opportunity, talent.  And I think the real waste is only slowly coming to me.  I am wasting my joy.  When something wonderful happens to me, I transmogrify it into a problem.  When someone tells me I am loved, I question it.  When I try to think of what I deserve, I dodge the question.

Now, this is who I am.  I think too much.  In the long run, what does that accomplish?  What seems like a waste could be seen as the necessary part of the whole, neither good nor bad.  The yin and the yang, as it were.  However you see it, the waste is inseparable from the procession of events that make up a life.  It's a product.  And so is regret.  It's what thinking humans do.  You get a result and you rejoice, but you also regret.  So sue me.

After all this musing, I end up with the Declaration of Independence. I have the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  Looking to my list, I find that it's easy to categorize from this point. I deserve these rights.  I need the basics to use my rights:  food and shelter, work and play.  I want the things that enhance these needs: security, stability, creativity, meaning//purpose, health, money, amusement, aesthetics, exercise of mind and body.  Coming full circle, I deserve the intangibles that inform these wants and needs:  love, laughter, joy, friendship.  Where does regret fit in?  It probably shouldn't come into this at all.  But  I  do regret the time and energy I waste in the pursuit of unhappiness.

However, I don't fucking need, want, or deserve someone to take care of me.  Let's make that perfectly clear.

Getting lost

For some reason, I was telling a friend about my trip to Italy, and the truly epic ways in which I could get lost, despite an excellent map, guidebook, and brain.  Siena was the worst, because I was fresh off the train, tired, hungry, and looking for a place to stay.  The old town is a series of twisting circular streets, all leading to the Piazza.  I found the tourist place on the Piazza, but instead of calling for me, they gave me three addresses and sent me and my heavy 20-year-old pack into the cobbled streets.  The backpack was left over from my post-college one-month Eurail-hostel vagabondage, but the body was much less able to handle the weight.

The first stop, I recall, was at a blank door in the middle of an uncharming (for Siena) street.  I buzzed for the landlady, and a bald slatternly woman buzzed me in.  She was standing at the top of a steep flight of stairs, and she had no English.  I climbed up to see an absolute hole-in-the-wall, with taped-up windows and a dirty quilt.

I left.

I can't remember what happened at the next place, but  from there I was wandering the streets turning the exact wrong way whenever it was possible to.  Did I mention that the streets were twisting and curvy?  There were also a lot of intersections. When I finally reached a sweet little hotel on a quiet street, I was in no state to deal with any more roadblocks.  So, when the young man with the melting brown eyes said, "I'm sorry, we have no rooms available tonight," I looked at him and said, "I think I'm going to cry."  I didn't think I was serious, but he did, and when he said, "No, don't cry Miss," I found out...yes, I was going to cry.   I gulped and gasped, and he got on the phone and found me a space at the Youth Hostel and a cab to take me there.

I thought I was remembering this, because I am still able to get totally lost, even when I know the place, even when I have my smart phone to tell me the way.  Last week, when V was visiting, she was ready to smack the phone out of my hand:  she had a perfectly good map and was giving me adequate directions.  She thought.  But she was right in that I had no business trying to use the smart phone while I was driving.

It's funny:  in my past life, I would never dream of texting or phoning while I was driving, and I would totally get myself equipped with good maps and directions, or be prepared to spend some time exploring.  But now I've abandoned those skills in favor of the sound-bite, GIS technology.  Google is my guide, and that's a pretty scary thought.

I think I need to find a better guide, and not just for my physical travels.

Today, my therapist took issue with all the "shoulds" yattering in my brain.  I had been whining:  I should make more money, do more creative things during my time off, practise more (well, I SHOULD), be a better friend, etc etc etc.  But then she gave me a Should of her own:  figure out what I Need, what I Want, what I Desire.  Three different things, she says.  (Which makes three more Shoulds....)

After writing this, I think I know what I NEED:  the ability to manage being lost.  I don't know where I am or where I am going.  But I have a pretty good map, guidebook and brain.   And my friends and family are pretty nice concierges, even if they don't have melting brown eyes and an Italian accent.

So, time to explore.