That line – taken from Switchfoot’s song Always – has made me think a lot lately about the greater meaning of it all. There’s always multiple times in life where we look back and we regret about different things as we go on, maybe how we’re not friends with a certain person anymore or how perhaps we wish we didn’t say those certain things. And so we spend time, just wishing and sitting there thinking how we wished that we could change how things went on. How we wish we could CHANGE what happened. You cannot change the past, true, but we can change things in the present.
“To err is to be human.” We all make mistakes. And more often than not, we make them even when we’re not meaning to. We make them and wish we didn’t. And so when we look back, we wish we didn’t do a certain this or that – but often these things can be changed. Every breath we have in life is another chance to change the way we do things, to try to make the dream into a reality. It might not be necessarily easy, but often the reward will be greater in the end.
I’m not the type of person that forgives easily. I used to always confront people, never wanted to let things pass – and just not forget about it. But as time goes on, you realize how trivial these type of things are, and how in a couple years, or maybe even a year, you’ll reflect and realize what a waste of time it was, how pointless they were. So it felt great in that moment, to get back at that person and spend time talking crap about them all over the intraweb, waste a couple months doing so. But where does that get you? I’m not saying that you should turn a blind eye to people who do things that wrong you, but I’m saying you need to think about the situation and think about if it’s something you want to remember going through, how bad the situation is, or if it’s just going to make everything worse, as in will this matter what I do? Of course if someone is bullying you or causing you harm/pain in any sort of way, it should and needs to be addressed, but there are many different forms of the sort.
One of my friends from a couple years ago still holds a grudge after we got into a argument about a tournament while we were in Grade 6. I’ve gotten over it but she still hasn’t. We go to the same high school and we’ve never said anything to each other. It seems so stupid to me now, for what we both did and the fact that we haven’t gotten over it – not to judge, but she still glares at me in the hallways and when we run into one another. At least just let bygones be bygones and forget about the other, to me it doesn’t matter anymore especially since its not like we’re trying to be friends anymore but it doesn’t seem to be the case for her, and it just baffles me sometimes since it’s really something that to me really doesn’t make a difference anymore. Would I give her a second chance? Well I forgive her, I mean second chances.. I believe in mistakes you made, of course.. will they have to be given with caution and reason? Well yes of course.
Everytime I hear this verse it makes me thinks of things I regret – and maybe of some that I can do to change; to do the best I can, and of my dreams and the things I want to do, yet I haven’t. Every breath you take is a second chance to do something that you were scared of to do, something that you tried but couldn’t, to take back something you wish you hadn’t said, to think of something before you act on impulse, to change your alternate reality into your real, and better reality.
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