Regrets
I am going to share some of mine with you; some very deep/personal ones and the pain they has caused me. I bet you have many in your life too! If you’re human you probably do. I will then offer what little advice I can in order to get rid of the pain it may be causing you.
Some of the largest regrets come, in my honest opinion, when we see what we could have done or should have done after the fact. It might take years for some of the “realizations” to come our way, or … it might not. Some are a lot faster. But this is life. We live and we learn. We learn by failing and picking ourselves back up after it all.
There isn’t a special order of appearance here. I’m just going to snatch a whole pile of my regrets and share them with you. Maybe you will see some of you in what horrible mistakes I have made.
Regret #1
When I was a young lad, I was a bad boy. I found one girl who I really thought was my true love but I sinned a grievous sin against her. I cheated on her not just once or twice, but with many. This cost me the loss of that relationship and years of untold pain as I searched the world over for another that could match her. In time I did find my love and it’s been great and God has blessed me with a great family. Perhaps we never know what we have until it’s gone. God will allow us to wallow in misery for a while to teach us a lesson. So you want to screw around with 100 women, huh? OK! Go at it and see what it brings you. I did and it brought me sorrow and emptiness. Has cheating on your wife or girlfriend actually brought you any joy? Or has it caused you regret and pain?
Regret #2
My second lust was for cars. I owned over 50 of them in my life. I cannot possibly count the loss and waste crashing them and the money I put in and then selling them at wicked losses. It took me 30+ years to learn this horrible lesson that cars just plain ole suck! Each one of us should just stop lusting after them and blowing our money on hands down, the worst “investment” ever devised for mankind. No one can count the billions in losses as we buy cars for $30K, run them for 5-7 years or longer and the thousands in repairs just blown to the wind. Multiply this by millions upon millions of cars sold every year. It just never ends. What a racket!
Regret #3
Blowing money like a drunken Brazilian sailor. I have wasted and squandered more money than I could possibly remember. It pains me very deeply to remember the waste. If I could do it over again, I would have invested it a lot faster than I ever did. I know I would be very much better off for it.
I believe this is my worst regret ever. I will be sorrowed by this till the day I die:
Regret #4, 5, 6 etc.
First it was taking on a hedge fund. The idea sounded great at the time. Promises were made to me and I ended up working for far, far less than what was standard industry norm. They started me for a month with $30K then $60K then 100K and every month I performed fantastically they just kept throwing money at me. However, I listened to the advice of the hedge fund “manager” and it was really against my will. He urged me for days, weeks and months and sometimes pressed me a few times a day to “go big or go home!” and I relented and ended up trading 10, 20 , 40, 50 standards per clip. It was far, far past my comfort zone. I should have never done this! I was relenting at his push and it was horrible. When I relented for that aspect, he got me to relent in other things and it was a disaster.
I saw clearly I was on the wrong side of a market and I was doing my best to hedge up on USD pullbacks, but each time I did and I got anywhere near 40, 50 % hedged he would yell at me and demand I stop. “We do not want that!” he would say. I had to listen. What a horrible mistake that was. For the next day or two it would go against me making the positions bad and the amount I made could not compensate for the losses. At the worst points he would then demand that I hedge up and no amount of explaining could get him to see the mistakes. He caused me to make a lot of mistakes and tied my hands up. I remember even making $8K a day and washing away $4K a day in losses…. it was not enough. Nothing could please him. This all happened during the three months that my mom was dying of cancer and brings me to even more regrets.
When I found out my mom had cancer I should have quit all trading immediately; my trade room and the hedge fund. But I felt duty and honor bound to work. I tried like heck to work 16 hours a day and I stiffed my very own mother in her last three months. I could have given all of my time to her; regret I hold so deep it pains me to my very soul this very day. There is nothing I can do to get that time back. I royally screwed up.
So … looking over my life I see the great kindnesses I have done for others; things I will not even mention here and I can tell you they are so far above and beyond any story I have ever heard in my life. I do not know another human being that has done certain acts of kindness like the ones I have done, and I have to say that some of them I have no regrets about but others I actually do! For I had no discernment! I did not pray about it! I just saw the need and I did it. I know now, I should not have. This too is a big regret for me.
There were two other times in my life when I should have done something. I mean that it was in my very power to do so and I did not. I made a bad choice and did not rescue someone that could have very badly used it… and it would have been life changing. This too is a horrible regret for me; haunting actually. I feel I could have changed the course of history. I will go a bit deeper here. All it would have taken in its entirety is about $4K to $5K bucks worth of money and I think he would be alive today. I held back and did not act upon what I should have. At Christmas, Robert died. We found him dead in his apartment. There was no heat. When we looked in the fridge there was no food (he was diabetic) but there were Christmas presents he had bought for his two girls Erica and Eden that I loved very much. They were the sweetest things in the world. He sacrificed his very food to buy them presents and somehow he died from this. I believe if I was more giving he (my best friend) would be alive this day and his girls’ lives would be very different from what they are. You have no idea the pain and haunting that thinking about this causes me.
Looking back on life I can see so many mistakes. I wish I could undo them. I just cannot! So I simply have to pray to God and trust in his mercy that I know is more forgiving than I am.
My guess is that you have made mistakes and that you have regrets. But let me say this… we did not know at the time, did we? I mean if you know in your very heart of hearts that you did the very best with what you had at the time (your level of understanding at that time) then that really was all that you could do. Again, we live and we learn so we can be better next time.
I have kids. They are approaching 16 and I see the shift. I am no longer considered “super dad”. They think the same things that I thought when I was 16! “My parents don’t understand! They are square” and so on. I can actually see that they are coming into their own. They think they know everything. Just like I once thought I did. It was not until the 25 to 35 year old bracket that my brain even started to wake up and I realized just how little I knew. But alas!
This is the way of all the earth! The generation that comes after does not remember the former days. Nor shall they listen to the advice of parents. Nor shall they learn from history. This is a very great tragedy. I honestly cannot even think of anything more horrible.
But I also see that I cannot stop it. My kids are absolutely going to go through hell. No one escapes this life unscathed! And they will be tested, tried, and they will fail and some of those failures will be most miserable. The amazing thing is that I can do nothing to stop this tragedy. My warnings currently fall on deaf ears. They will not hear or listen for they know all… and of course life is a bed of roses! Buttercups and pink ponies!
Now that you have read all of this consider “the wisdom of God”. He says to you:
“Hast thou knowledge? Have it to thyself” It means that when you get wisdom and understanding it is yours. You almost cannot impart it to anyone. It’s very difficult to even give it away. People don’t seem to want it much. It’s a truly humble and righteous person that seeks out a mentor and listens to the advice of others that have walked through hell and back and know the way to come out with minimal damage. I cannot possibly tell you how bad I wish I had a mentor! I did not. It simply was not available to me but if I knew then what I know now I would have taken a quality mentor if one had appeared in my life.
Now let me say this; I am going to get really deep and personal with you, ok? If you have screwed up and made a mess of one or two things in life or even many more… consider this great thing. This should really help you, ok?
#1 Consider the prodigal son. He said to his father: “I don’t even want to wait! Give to me now my portion of what you would when you die. Let me have it now and run with it.” The father did and the son blew it oh so badly. One day he was totally destitute and came back so humble and poor and said in great meekness: “Please take me back! I royally screwed up! I am not even worthy of being called your son. Hire me as one of your servants.” The father put a golden ring on his hand, signifying son-ship and a royal robe on him and shoes on his feet and the father fell on his son’s neck weeping and crying! He said: “My son who was dead has come home to me and is alive now.”
Think about that. Repentance is the greatest thing on earth. Simply realizing how badly you messed up and admitting it in your very heart of hearts before God with not another soul around you… just crying out for mercy in your bed … God will hear from heaven and He will forgive you and He will fix things up and make them right in time. This mercy is the greatest gift to mankind you could ever receive.
And now consider this next thing.
#2 There were two thieves on the cross, crucified next to the Savior; the Son of God. They each railed on him with their mouths, cursing him to high heaven. After a few hours of mocking and cursing, one of them wised up. He saw Jesus actually praying for his persecutors and this man woke up! He came to his senses and started to bash on the other thief saying: “Hey! Shut up man! Can’t you see that you and I are nailed here justly but this man over here…. well… he has done nothing wrong?” Then he turned to Jesus and he opened his mouth and he confessed with his very heart and said: “Lord, will you please remember me when you come to your kingdom?”
What was his answer? Instant forgiveness. “Verily, verily this day you will be with me in paradise.” Let me interpret that for you: truly, truly without a shadow of a doubt, I am telling you that you’re going to be with me this very day in paradise.
So in departing, I would say that perhaps you have screwed up marriages or in child rearing. Perhaps you have screwed up in business or investments or any myriad of other things. You can sit there and wallow in regret all your life and let it eat you up alive… or you can simply confess this to the very God of your soul, the God that owns everything on earth and express how sorry you are, ask for forgiveness and then you could mix that with trust. Trusting that there is a God out there that has told you 100 times in 100 different ways… in a book you may not have ever read…. that if you will simply ask, it will be given unto you!
So what are you going to do? Regret? Or get a cleansing from regrets? I suggest you get that cleansing and get healed up. Pick yourself up and go on in newness of life.
I mean this as a help to you. I hope you can humble yourself and take this advice. I assure you that I really know what I am saying. I am the king of mistakes, bad choices and regrets and through it all my God has rescued me more times than I can even remember or count. Let him do the same for you.