32 years old. How did I get to this place? It seems like just yesterday, the whole world lay before me. There was nothing but possibility. But that was ten years ago…

Ten years. A decade… It’s gone by in a flash. I finished university, made mistakes, became a father, made some more mistakes, and had my heart broken in ways that’d make Humpty Dumpty appreciate just how much worse he could have it.

I’ve never trusted anyone who’s said that they’ve had no regrets and believed it. I mean, sure, what we’ve done in the past is what’s made us who we are today, and it’s hard to let go of identity. But who wouldn’t want to be something better? Some better version of who we’ve become? Someone more refined? Something less imperfect?

I’ve made choices, many of them because I had to, but many more because I didn’t know any better. And I learned from them. But hindsight is always 20/20, and I think it’s vain and delusional and self-absorbed to insist that you’re better off than you could’ve been if you could’ve gone back and made some of those choices differently.

But what good is it to dwell on such things? On such mistakes? Maybe none. Maybe a bit. After all, there are still a lot of choices ahead of us, and if you carry those regrets with you in just the right way, maybe you’ll bring with you the wisdom and experience to make better decisions in the future.