missed opportunities are a bummer. obssessing over them is not healthy but regret is a powerful emotion.
how do you deal with regret, with guilt?
can you? stuff in your past is like a carving on the bark of spaling. over time, the scar, won't go away. because of the way trees grow it won't go up or down much either, it'll just stay right where it began. it might even get darker. but it won't get bigger. YOU, however, can. You can keep growing, doing more things, more branches, being more things. The wound won't get smaller but you can make it a smaller part of who you are. Maybe regrets are like that. They stick around forever like arborglyphs. Or maybe they make like a tree and leaf. a red or purple leaf in the autumn. As days get shorter and chlorophyll production decreases, the yellow and orange carotenoids, which are always in leaves, appear as the green fades. But red and purple leaves are the interesting ones. As winter approaches it would seem to be a good time for trees to conserve energy but some trees do the opposite. instead of giving up, they spend extra energy producing anthocyanins to turn their leaves red and purple hues. these colors protect their leaves from sun damage before their nutrients can all be used and may also be a defence against insects looking for a parasitic home. A way for the tree to tell the insects: "Yes, I am in part dying but NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT. I am still very much vital." Drought and even tourniquets applied by man can bring about these colors prematurely.
"When you look at beautiful autumn colors,you are looking at stress."
But the bigger the fight the trees put up, the more energy they put into their defences at the very end, the more brilliant their colors will be. Winter will eventually come. But scientifically, the brightest, deepest, most remarkable colors come from not giving up too easily or quickly.
