我可以告诉你，我的妻子第一次穿着我近20年前盯着她的眼睛。现在这并不是迄今为止浪漫技能的证明 - 尽管如此，不要吹嘘，我确实有一个非常伟大的记录记录，记住厕所座位。不，我回顾上2001年5月3日的能力，我的妻子戴着黑色的顶部，牛仔裤和靴子更像是我无法实现的忘记任何事物。
现在我的类似大象的记忆是好当comes to remembering practical things like, say, where I left my keys or feeding the dog. It’s less joyful when it means remembering, in vivid detail, the time I:
- 被挑选在PE的垒球队 -再次- 但不是在我不得不倾听两个船长之前，争论谁会被绽放地陷入困境。（“来吧，我必须把他带走！”）
- 被一个人喊道movie theatersecurity guard, in front of a big line of people, for trying to sneak in candy.
- Quite literally, audibly farted in church. It was a friend’s wedding.
While those things are unfortunate (read: humiliating), they’re harmless. They don’t keep me up at night. However, somewhere along the way, I went from only remembering less-than-great moments to also重温他们在痛苦的细节中。更糟糕，后悔他们。
你知道遗憾 - 那些是回忆你失去了睡眠了。基本上在前几个酒吧内介意了什么kol nidre..
“Regrets. I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention,”Frank Sinatrasings in “My Way.” The Rob Bloom version would be: “Regrets. I’ve had a bunch. That I relive over and over again.”
整个“后悔和重温 - 无法放手”模式是我过去10年的摔跤。现在不要错问。我不会打败自己every decisionI wish I hadn’t made, such as buying a flipped house that turned out to be a real-life adaptation of the movieThe Money Pitbut without the classic hijinks.I do, however, have a handful of regrets that I’ve spent way too long reliving. And not letting go.
But then last Tuesday happened. That’s when I was sitting at the kitchen island after a particularly long day ofZoom meetingsand various emotional responses from the kids to virtual school. You know, just another day in Covid life. My 8-year-old daughter walked up to me, bawling. She was hysterical. Clearly, something clearly awful had just happened. That, or she had just stepped on a Lego barefoot.
Through tears, she explained she had done the most awful, worst thing ever: In Animal Crossing, she told one of her villagers it was okay to leave the island.
就像我说，最糟糕的。事物。曾经。
我有一个与动物过境的爱/讨厌的关系。一方面，我很感激它是an escape在大流行期间的女儿。另一方面，我错过了每次晚餐谈话没有围绕汤姆角落围绕动物穿越宇宙的威胁霸主的日子。
所以我坐着，听我的女儿解释一下她的眼泪, what she called, “the worst thing I’ve ever done!” She relived how it happened.
“I was going too fast!”
“I wasn’t reading closely enough!”
“Bertha told me she wanted to leave and I said OK but I messed up and I don’t want her to leave and I can’t believe I did this and I’ll never get her back again and I’m so mad at myself!”
And that’s when it hit me. A total “Cat’s in the Cradle” moment:我的女孩就像我一样.
现在，成为爸爸是我生命中最大的乐趣之一。而且，要坦率，我努力工作。在过去的11年里，我从来没有太累了，读一本书，成为一个人的布偶，或者做一个真正重要的东西，就像介绍我的孩子一样Mel Brooksmovies and the essential Billy Joel collection. I lovebeing a dadwith every fiber in my being. So suddenly seeing my daughter act like, well,me, made me go from feeling like a great father to a shitty one in seconds.
But then, something happened that woke me out of my “woe is me” moment: My daughter started crying less. And then she started getting calmer. We talked about how mistakes happen and what we can learn from them. We also talked about the positives that might come out of this, such as new villagers coming to her island. We talked, we laughed, we hugged. And then I watched her happily skip off in order to get back to playing Animal Crossing again.
I was amazed at what just happened. My daughter had done something she regretted, she addressed it,感受到痛苦of it, and then搬上了. In her 8-year-old world, it was over. Done. Now she was once again fully engrossed in her game, living only in that moment, the regret behind her. Amazing.
This wasn’t the first time I admired one of my kids. But it was the first time I realized the impact my inability to let go could have on my kids.
Now I’ve never made a New Year’s Resolution in my life but I将要make a “today resolution” to try and start letting go.
As someone who has lived with regrets for a while now, I can tell you, with confidence, that beating yourself up over regrets doesn’t help. It doesn’t change the past; it only robs you of the joy of the present. And if the过去的一年教us anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. Nobody knows how much present any of us have. What I do know is I don’t want to spend my present regretting the past.
So with that, I hereby give myself permission to let go. Of the grief, regrets, and baggage that have been living rent-free in my head. Mykids deservea model of someone who’s able to let go. My wife deserves that in a partner, and I deserve it, too.
alina kvaratskhelia / getty图像的标题图像
