When I was 10 years old, I would ride around the neighbourhood on my metallic green bicycle listening to Bryan Adams on my Walkman, imagining all the amazing things I was going to do when I grew up.
Then, I got sick and everything changed. My life went from after school fun and dreaming big dreams, to facing challenging times and trying to survive them.
When bad things happen and every day we encounter suddenly looks uncertain, it’s easy to believe that the future will bring us more of the same. The aspirations we once had for ourselves, now look completely impossible, so we bury them somewhere within us and try really hard to forget them, hoping they’ll just go away.
But here’s what I’ve learned about that.
The dreams you dream for your life can never be extinguished. Once the seed has been planted. Once you’ve felt that unmistakable calling on your heart. Once you know what it is you were put on this Earth to do, it will be with you forever. You might try to push those hopes aside. You might try to talk yourself out of them to avoid disappointment. You might even pretend that they weren’t all that important to you in the first place.
But you and I both know that’s not the case.
Maybe your life up until now has had its challenges and maybe the idea of a charmed future seems unlikely from where you currently stand, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the chance to at least explore the possibility. You owe it to yourself to find out.
So don’t give up on the dreams you once dreamed for your life. Don’t pack away your metallic green bicycle and Walkman for good.
Regret sucks. It’s one of the most devastating and unrelenting emotional burdens we can ever bear. But it’s not the regret of trying something and failing that hurts, what really cuts deep, is the regret of never having tried in the first place.
