Normal Human Heroes

This song is a favorite.

There are things that I wished I did differently. With the benefit of hindsight, I can look back and note a lot of ways that I could have done better. Some things seem like such superior choices. Sometimes, they would have been clearly impossible to make, as I didn’t know then what I know now. Other times, it’s not so clearly impossible.

So, sometimes I regret. “Ah, if only I’d done that sooner, if only I had started then.” But then, ‘sooner’ is relative, of course. Sooner than today, yes.

And sooner than tomorrow? Sooner than a year from now, sooner than a few decades from now? How great would it be to have started years before?

Ah, but I did start sooner than that. I started years before that.

How much would I give then, to be able to start today, for all the progress I could have made?

I’ve found this small exercise helpful a number of times over the past year or so, in helping to move past regret and throwing myself into something, grateful that I’m starting earlier. Just as we can take frustration from the fact that we didn’t start sooner, we can also take satisfaction from the fact that we did.

Beautiful song, from the main menu of the game Civilization IV. (No real relation to the gameplay.)