The son said to the father, “I want to be a professional baseball player!”
The father said, “Only 1 in a 100,000 become professional baseball players.”
The son smiled, “Well that 1 is going to be me!”
But rather than playing with the son and helping him to hone his skills and guiding him to come to his own conclusion as to whether this was his real heart’s calling or not, the father kept telling the son how impractical his dream was…in words, in looks, in lack of support. He filled his son with practicality and mistook it for love.
And so one day the son finally walked past a garbage can and dropped his mitt into it. And when he got home he told his father what he had done. He still had the smallest hope that his father would say, “No! Let’s get your glove and get to work!” But all his father said was, “That’s a good thing you did, son.”
And on that day something died inside of the son. It was not just his dream of becoming a professional baseball player. It was his very dream factory itself that closed down.
The son got good grades in school and his father would tell him, “That’s a good boy!” He got into a good college and graduated top of his class. His father elbowed the man next to him and pointed at his son as he was handed the honor. He started his own company and became very successful in his business, making a lot of money and achieving some recognition.
And at his father’s funeral he stood there, handsome in his fine black suit, his wife and two small children standing obediently by his side. As a silent tear rolled down his face, he mourned not only the man who lay under the ground but the son with dreams who had been buried long ago.
Story of my childhood! Thank God I discovered pot, and then Yoga!
So how do we move on to having no regrets for the parts of our lives we’ve missed?
You go back and kill everyone who wronged you. That’s what I did. Granted 20 years in Sing Sing Prison made me realize that my father wasn’t the only one who got fucked by my actions!
-Remember that ALL of our life has served a purpose for our soul’s growth and adventure.
-Forgive those who we feel have wronged us for, to borrow from Jesus, “They know not what they do.”
-Call back all the scared, angry, afraid parts of us that we have left in the past so that they can rejoin us in wholeness in the present.
-Live in the NOW—be present, take risks, use the good silverware, play in the grass with your fancy dress, tell the people you care about that you love them, never go to bed angry, dance, sing or play every day, stop living for anyone else and start living for yourself—and then you will not have to worry about looking back at today with regrets.