Regret.

I've had a bad week. One of those weeks where you have a bad day and go to bed upset, or stressed, or angry, and the negativity carries through into the next day, and then the next. And then it's Thursday and you don't know where the time has gone.

Most of the cause was stress from exams- I do not hide the fact that I hate exams. (I started this blog because I hate exams, read some older posts and you'll see.) I felt especially pressured this time around, though, because I am trying to make the best of my education here. High school is different. High school is a requirement, something you love to hate, something you complain about until it's over and you realize that if you had stopped complaining life would have been a lot better. Here, however, I am fortunate beyond belief and I try to remember it every day. I am taking classes I love, learning things I am interested in and trying to do every thing to the best of my ability. But when you have four exams in three days, three of them consisting of two or more essays, and most of them requiring very specific knowledge it can become quite overwhelming. Especially for someone like me who does not perform well under pressure yet has very, very high standards for herself.

The way I see it I am not very talented. I can't sing, I don't dance anymore, and my artwork looks like something that would be cute if I was 8 years old and made it in class for mother's day, but that doesn't quite cut it anymore. This is not a pity party, I am not fishing for compliments about my capabilities. I am simply realistic in my assessment of myself. I am not talented in those respects, but there are things I do well. I love to write, (hence the blog) and I am intelligent. I'm not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed but I work hard and, as I said before, I have very high standards for myself. Around exam week I find myself thinking "I'm not good at anything else, I'm not talented, so I HAVE to do well on my exams because my academics are all I have! If I can't even get an A what am I good for?" Pretty heavy stuff, I know, but who thinks happy thoughts 100% of the time?
I took a study break to go to yoga, thinking that there is no way I could stay stressed through an hour of yoga. Unfortunately, it almost made things worse, as it was one of those days where I just wasn't flexible enough and wasn't strong enough. For the entirety of our savasana meditation I found myself thinking 'This negativity is completely my own, I just have to release it and I will feel better. I just have to want to feel better and I will. I control my own happiness.' It's pretty much the thought process I live by. Yet it just wouldn't work, I couldn't release my negativity. I wanted to complain, I wanted to feel sorry for myself. I stressed myself out more as I studied for my last exam and only made matters worse. So I went to bed, and I couldn't sleep, I had a bad dream and I woke up feeling just as bad as when I went to bed.

A friend of mine told me that happiness is contagious. She said she understood I was stressed, and tired, and frustrated and so on and so forth, and she was sending positive thoughts my way. I thought to myself 'yeah, right' but then realized that while her positive thoughts might not impact on me, my negative ones sure weren't going to help. I took my exam, came home and took a nap, had another bad dream, and then something finally turned my mood around.

A friend of my sister's posted a video on Facebook made in Galway, Ireland (where I happen to have visited this summer and fell in love with). My curiosity got the better of me and I watched all eleven minutes and thirteen seconds of it. Those were the best eleven minutes and thirteen seconds of the last couple days. The video was an interview of fifty different people asking them the simple, but very difficult question "What is your biggest regret?" The subjects ranged from twenty years old to almost eighty years old, and the answers varied from positive to heart breaking. It made me realize that life is so much bigger than three days of exams, bigger than the education you receive in a classroom, bigger than the moments of negativity, bigger than me.

I regret feeling sorry for myself, I regret being in a bad mood for the past couple days, and I regret taking it out on my roommates because they certainly didn't deserve it. I regret letting my emotions get the better of me sometimes, I regret not being there for a friend when she needed me, I regret living so far away from my family (though I love the experience). I regret some things I've done, I regret some things I wasn't brave enough to do. I regret taking anything for granted. I regret regret.
I try to live my life without regret, and though it has been short for the most part I like to think I am successful, for this long list I just made is not my whole life, only small aspects of it that remind me to be better.

What is your biggest regret?
One of the answers on the video was "We regret the things we do not do". Find the truth in that statement and maybe you won't have any regrets either.