It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd develop other talents, said yes to different offers, easy to wish we'd work harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in a band, traveled other countries, said yes to a date or did yoga lol.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret and keep regretting.

But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.

We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available.

We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine.

Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies.
We just have to close our eyes and enjoy the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays.