Ephesians 5:15,16 “Be very careful, then, how you live… making the most of every opportunity.”
One of my life goals is to live such that I don’t have any significant regrets at the end of my life. Two Cornell psychologists called Gilovic and Medvec did some detailed research on the relationship between time as a key factor in regrets. We tend to regret our actions in the short term, whereas in the long term we regret our inactions. So, for example, in the short term a person might regret getting drunk last night and saying what they did; but more profoundly, in the long term they regret not reconciling with their father before he died. Gilovic and Medvec’s study found that in an average week, action regrets were slightly greater than inaction regrets – 53% to 47%. However, when people looked back at end of their lives, inaction outnumbered action regrets by 84% to 16%. So, because many of us are totally risk-averse, we might reach the end of our lives having made only few mistakes but with huge regrets at the risks we didn’t take.
An anonymous friar in a Nebraska monastery wrote the following late in life: “If I had my life to live over again, I’d try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take more trips. I would be crazier. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. If I had to do it over again I would go places, do things, and travel lighter. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I’d pick more daisies.”
How about you? Take some time to reflect on this today – and then choose to do something about it.
Lord, help me make the most of every opportunity that comes my way today. Amen!
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