Do you have things that you always mean to do, but never quite get round to? Well, this blog is something that I've been meaning to do for months, but kept putting it off - to start with because I couldn't think what to write, and then, to be honest, I just plain forgot about it!
But it got me thinking about other things that I've meant to do and never have. Like learning Spanish, or how to fix a car; keeping in touch with old friends; volunteering at an old people's home, or winning the lottery.
Some of these are obviously just fantasies, with virtually zero chance of them ever happening; others arise from benevolent intentions but again, are unlikely to actually happen as they're only on my list as a result of a vague feeling that I should be doing "good deeds."
Others are things that could become reality, if I wanted them enough. I could learn how to speak Spanish if I took a class; I could learn how to fix a car if I went on a course. But do I want them enough? I'd love to be able to do these things, but I have little interest in learning to do them. I don't have a lot of spare time and to be honest, I'd rather do something else with it.
But there are other things that I desperately want to do, but fear that I've left it too late. I've never had a huge number of friends, but the ones I have had I like to think they're good friends. Over the years though, I've lost touch with so many. I moved away, they moved away, we all grew up, got married, had children. Life got in the way and it seemed like so much hassle to arrange things. I stopped trying to arrange get togethers in the hope that someone else would instead, but they didn't. And now it's been years and all I see of them is what they choose to share about themselves on Facebook, and I mourn for the friendships I used to have.
But maybe, after all, that's ok. Life moves on, people change. I'm not the same person I was back then, and most likely neither are the friends I used to have. These days I've got new friends, who I do make the effort to see. Not often, as life is busy and between us it can take a month just to find a date that we're all free, but we do meet up when we can. And I've made new friends through Facebook. I spend a lot of my time online these days and I've met people who I've come to consider close friends even if we never (or hardly ever) meet up in person.
I tell myself that it's hard enough keeping up with my current friends, as well as managing my health, work, family, the house, etc etc. There's only so much of me to go around, and I have to prioritise. I think it's broadly true that if you really want to do something, you'll find a way to do it. So maybe the fact that I haven't kept in touch with my old friends means that, deep down, I didn't feel it was worth the effort.
My biggest fear though is that it might have been worth the effort, but now I've left it too late. Although I have some old friends that I can meet up with after years apart and it's like we saw each other yesterday, there have been other occasions with old friends where it was just an hour of awkwardness, once we'd finished the "do you remember" conversations, and found we had nothing left to say to each other. This may be a natural consequence of us growing older and having become different people as we established new lives for ourselves. Or it might be that if we'd kept in touch more regularly along the way, we wouldn't now be strangers to each other. Who knows?
And I guess, after all, that's the point: who knows? There's no benefit in dwelling on "what ifs". Things might have been better, they might have been worse; they might have been different, or ended up not that different after all. But since we'll never know, it does us no good to dwell on it. All we can do is examine our lives as they are now, and decide what are the things we most want to do next. I might have left it too late to keep my old friendships alive, but there are new things to do: new challenges to face; new friendships to maintain; new obligations to fulfil.
I don't want to live my life with regrets. So I'll move on from the old regrets, and try to live my life from now on so that I don't create new regrets. Life is, after all, too short.
Jenny x
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