There's always more than one path, and to think otherwise is what resigns you to fate.

If we always take the path of least resistance, if we embrace inertia, if we never leap, if we never accept accountability for our choices, how can we find any triumph in our victories or any remorse in our losses?

Eventually kids become grown-ups too, and from there, the world is whatever they choose to make of it.

But what's regret anyway? Regret, I am learning these days, is a lot of things. But mostly, it's a slippery seed of longing, of looking back and asking yourself why you didn't know better when the answers were so obvious all along.

I might have felt broken, but at the end of it all, I didn't allow myself to break.

There's always more than one path, and to think otherwise is what resigns you to fate.

That you can look back fondly or even wistfully on pieces of your life and hound yourself with endless what-ifs, but nothing will change. The present will still be the present. The future will still unfold as it's meant to.