Logic & Reason
The power of Regret
Here’s an idea to consider: If you’re feeling regret, I wonder… does that mean you are examining a moment in your past where you can imagine a way that an event could have played out better? I ask because if you are, consider this lens. Before, was there hope in you to imagine better within your circumstances? Likely, you didn’t have the imagination for better. And that shaped the ideas, which became responses to the circumstances.
Now, however your imagination has grown to increase in the belief of better circumstances. From that growth, your mind can now imagine a scenario including what could have been better. That is growth in belief.
That is very, very good. It is, possibly, a small blessing from God known as a miracle. What a wonder!
So now, in your today, is your imagination helping you to imagine good possibilities? No? Take another look at your regrets, look and examine them for the beauty that you’re imagining.
And love that beautiful scene. Let the joy blossom and become hope in the possibilities because what you have is belief: belief in beautiful and joyful circumstances.
Love the joy that could have been. Now, wonder, “Could it be, that this time there could be something just as good around the corner? What would be different if I welcomed it? Could my future be so beautiful as my regret’s imagination? What if joy is real? How can I be ready to live in beauty, relationships, and joy?”
Let hope happen.
Although you can’t imagine now becoming better, you can imagine what went wrong being better because suddenly, without your knowing it, your heart believed in joy and in goodness existing in this life! And so, already you have increased in good things. You have more than you had, last time.
Now you have belief. Let that wonder grow a little bit of hope from knowing that you have seen something somewhere that has changed your mind from the belief in total brokenness to a belief that in this life joy is possible. Relish in your growth and let that belief be watered.
Somewhere along the way, you saw something that changed you. Look again at that regret: you’re imaging goodness in this life with belief in the exitance of it. You believe! It wasn’t impossible to believe, before. And perhaps, it still doesn’t make sense, with all the cumulative data from most of your life. But consider, how impossible was that hope, before?
I posit that something real impacted you. And that is a remarkable data point. It stands alone as an event for being a consequence; it is more real than all the dread that has come, so far. An anomaly in the data occurred.
Maybe if you could find out what you’d seen that caused this belief to happen within you, you’d be able to kill it. But what if whatever you’d seen was so real that it changed you in a place, consciously unchangeable? It is that an impact of profound significance. Belief in goodness being possible to live and experience in the land of the living. Isn’t that profound?
If you can believe that joy is possible to experience, even once (and you can feel it when examining that regret) then how much joy can be felt? Would life be worth living if the reward as joy, deep and wide joy, once a month? Would that me more than you’ve had, so far? Once a week? What if when you feel joy, because you’re growing (and having joy within your imagination is new ground, thus a symptom of growth to feel joy) how much joy is feelable at one time? Maybe in life there will be a limit to how many days of the any month a person has the impact of joyfulness upon their psychological being. But what if the growth to feel an amount of joy is ever increasing? You’ve already grown, a bit (evidenced by the sudden addition of belief in joy taking root in your imagination.)
Joy is real. Growth in joy is real. Maybe growth in joy can increase both in frequency as well as amount, all at once.
If joy is available for a season, an entire season, as your regret seems to believe, how much joy would you feel living in a season like that? Although you can’t imagine how it would feel to live in joy, you’re suddenly able to believe in the existence of joy. Astounding!
Before you fear that the scheming toward joy will fail, consider that you did not cause this belief to happen to yourself. Perhaps then, the repeatable part is just a much a sudden happening. Suddenly, joy is within you, alive within your imagination, swirling in an impactful dream of possibilities. How beautiful is this dream? Astounding!
Does fear boast against your hope? I wonder, do you know about suffering and sorrow? Have you learned that the bottom of the barrel has a basement, and the basement has a bunker, and the bunker has a hovel, so on and so forth, deeper and tighter. Pain has no end and neither is emptying real; but in fact, being human in already engrafted into being eternal. Whatever else this mystery implies about human souls, have you seen that there is infinity within the darkness and pain is ever increasing and sorrow ever taking of an energy within the being of self? This is a fact of the nature of evil. So, what of goodness? Have you not known that joy is increase? Have you not known that we are eternal and righteousness is available to us, just as much as evil? Have you not know? I testify to you now, that yes, we grow to receive from goodness in much a mirrored principle of eternity that evil is ever taking, more and more; goodness is ever giving, and we grow to receive more, in the mirrored way we grow in the ability to experience more pain, when treated with goodness by goodness, we grow to hold and keep and feel more goodness.
You are eternal. Your energy will always be with you. In an evil place, there will always be more of you to be taken. But in a good place, you will grow in the goodness of life. And there will more of you that can receive and keep and feel goodness. And it’s already impacted you; you’ve imagined in an impossibly way, with goodness. included in a dream about life. You’ve already increased. I posit, you will increase, again.
In your regret you have knowledge: imaginable joy.
There was so much good that could have been. What can I not, yet, imagine but that God can add to me? What if it’s possible? I wonder, what if there’s so much more goodness to experience?
