I’m the type of person who might occasionally be overheard delivering such cliches as: “I don’t regret anything I’ve done in life, regret is pointless!” It’s the type of platitude you might expect from some bar stool philosopher who puts his arm around you and wisely intones that life is, like, all about moving forward, bro. There’s something to old cliches, though... I think that admitting regret is like admitting that you’ve chosen to worry about, rather than learn from, a choice that you made. Having said that, there are certain situations from my past that think about a great deal more than others. I wonder how life might be different if I’d picked option B instead of A at some major juncture. I say this because I don’t necessarily regret the course of events that I’m about to impart, but I’m certainly ready to acknowledge that they sprung from what was probably the worst decision of my life.
Once upon a time, I lived with Natalie in an entirely decent sort of a place. My folks owned it and gave us a break on rent. The kitchen was too small, but it came with a fitness room downstairs and in-suite laundry. We really shouldn’t have complained one bit. As is so often the case though, our capacity to spend increased and desire for more spacious housing soon followed. I decided that the parent-owned condo that we lived in, despite our subsidized tenancy, was too small, in the wrong neighbourhood, and lacking in privacy and quiet. Thus we set out to rent a house of our very own. We dreamt of a cute, cozy little place where our little baby, to be born in the new home, could grow up in the sort of whimsical, carefree environment that parents must all envision.
Preparations for a move are an exercise in stress cultivation. I’m going through it right now, and it never gets more pleasant. The best laid plans of people with boxes often go awry. We make lists, we budget time and money, we write dates on the calendar and declare that this will be the last move for at least some indeterminate number of years. We plan to settle, to save money, to enjoy life. Moving has taught me a lot about chaos. There are too many factors and possibilities in every situation, and no matter how well you’ve thought something through, there’s always something you didn’t consider. The unforseen consequences of activities like signing year-long leases on short notice are the sort that teach you a lot about chaos.
When we found the character home (a term that has since become vulgar in our private lexicon), we were sold on its charm almost immediately. We hastily signed a lease. It was the last weekend of the month, and the landlord was particularly anxious to secure tenants before returning to his job in another city. We trusted him to look after the deficiencies that were pointed out in our pre-move in inspection at a later date, since he seemed by all measures to be a decent and trustworthy human being. Oops.
And then comes the learning. We were victims of our own naivete, and of the arrogance that often accompanies a steady income and a seemingly reasonable set of life plans. We should have checked it out better; we should have been less trusting; we shouldn’t have been so hasty to move when we weren’t even prepared to leave our other place. But leave we did, and we paid for it the entire time that we lived in that god-forsaken house.
A chronicle of the problems that we endured while we lived there would be lengthy and tedious. Suffice to say that the eventual flaw that broke the lease’s back was the discovery, by a telephone installer, that the electrical system in the house was extremely unsafe. The sense of home and of security that never quite took root was crushed. We realized that the person who had rented us this house did not have our safety or best interests at heart, and our rocky relationship with him was likewise ruined. I’d never met somebody before who was two-faced like that. It was this experience that taught me about people who are genuinely dishonest (how’s that for an oxymoron?) But I can’t blame him for everything. Again, our own naivete was a precursor to the problems long before they cascaded into a giant mess. Well, now we know.
I wonder how much we can trust people. I’ve become more cautious and more savvy about getting in to business and housing relationships since our catastrophic and painful experience back in Edmonton. I almost feel that the loss of innocence from that experience isn’t a boon, though. There’s something unpleasant about being suspicious of everyone else’s motives. Honesty is absolutely the most important thing to me, and the idea that other people aren’t willing to deal with me on the same terms and with the same mutual respect and honesty is disheartening. There’s still a lingering doubt in my mind every time I shake hands or put pen to paper, and I wish it wasn’t there. We’re about to move for the third time since leaving that house, and we’re still dealing with unresolved legal conflicts related to the exodus.
But here we are in Victoria, getting on with our lives. We’ve done the due diligence on the new place, and this time around, I feel that we can be confident about our decision to settle there. It has the space and the location we need, and a dishwasher. It’s owned by people who cared enough to point out the recent upgrades that they’ve made to the unit’s safety, environmental quality and structural integrity. They have kids of their own, and seem to be the sort of people with a lot of empathy towards a young, inexperienced family. We’re working on building a life here, and I sincerely hope that our housing situation will be a help rather than a hinderance moving forward.
Regret is a tricky thing. Maybe I’m not even defining it correctly. Maybe I do regret my mistakes... but how could I when they’ve led me to this amazing place? Does that mean that they weren’t actually bad decisions, just ones with unintended outcomes? But I still find myself wondering, what if? What if I’d taken the path of least resistance? How many times in the years to come will I find myself looking back on the decisions that seemed sensible to me now and thinking to myself, what if?
Word count: 1,102
Once upon a time, I lived with Natalie in an entirely decent sort of a place. My folks owned it and gave us a break on rent. The kitchen was too small, but it came with a fitness room downstairs and in-suite laundry. We really shouldn’t have complained one bit. As is so often the case though, our capacity to spend increased and desire for more spacious housing soon followed. I decided that the parent-owned condo that we lived in, despite our subsidized tenancy, was too small, in the wrong neighbourhood, and lacking in privacy and quiet. Thus we set out to rent a house of our very own. We dreamt of a cute, cozy little place where our little baby, to be born in the new home, could grow up in the sort of whimsical, carefree environment that parents must all envision.
Preparations for a move are an exercise in stress cultivation. I’m going through it right now, and it never gets more pleasant. The best laid plans of people with boxes often go awry. We make lists, we budget time and money, we write dates on the calendar and declare that this will be the last move for at least some indeterminate number of years. We plan to settle, to save money, to enjoy life. Moving has taught me a lot about chaos. There are too many factors and possibilities in every situation, and no matter how well you’ve thought something through, there’s always something you didn’t consider. The unforseen consequences of activities like signing year-long leases on short notice are the sort that teach you a lot about chaos.
When we found the character home (a term that has since become vulgar in our private lexicon), we were sold on its charm almost immediately. We hastily signed a lease. It was the last weekend of the month, and the landlord was particularly anxious to secure tenants before returning to his job in another city. We trusted him to look after the deficiencies that were pointed out in our pre-move in inspection at a later date, since he seemed by all measures to be a decent and trustworthy human being. Oops.
And then comes the learning. We were victims of our own naivete, and of the arrogance that often accompanies a steady income and a seemingly reasonable set of life plans. We should have checked it out better; we should have been less trusting; we shouldn’t have been so hasty to move when we weren’t even prepared to leave our other place. But leave we did, and we paid for it the entire time that we lived in that god-forsaken house.
A chronicle of the problems that we endured while we lived there would be lengthy and tedious. Suffice to say that the eventual flaw that broke the lease’s back was the discovery, by a telephone installer, that the electrical system in the house was extremely unsafe. The sense of home and of security that never quite took root was crushed. We realized that the person who had rented us this house did not have our safety or best interests at heart, and our rocky relationship with him was likewise ruined. I’d never met somebody before who was two-faced like that. It was this experience that taught me about people who are genuinely dishonest (how’s that for an oxymoron?) But I can’t blame him for everything. Again, our own naivete was a precursor to the problems long before they cascaded into a giant mess. Well, now we know.
I wonder how much we can trust people. I’ve become more cautious and more savvy about getting in to business and housing relationships since our catastrophic and painful experience back in Edmonton. I almost feel that the loss of innocence from that experience isn’t a boon, though. There’s something unpleasant about being suspicious of everyone else’s motives. Honesty is absolutely the most important thing to me, and the idea that other people aren’t willing to deal with me on the same terms and with the same mutual respect and honesty is disheartening. There’s still a lingering doubt in my mind every time I shake hands or put pen to paper, and I wish it wasn’t there. We’re about to move for the third time since leaving that house, and we’re still dealing with unresolved legal conflicts related to the exodus.
But here we are in Victoria, getting on with our lives. We’ve done the due diligence on the new place, and this time around, I feel that we can be confident about our decision to settle there. It has the space and the location we need, and a dishwasher. It’s owned by people who cared enough to point out the recent upgrades that they’ve made to the unit’s safety, environmental quality and structural integrity. They have kids of their own, and seem to be the sort of people with a lot of empathy towards a young, inexperienced family. We’re working on building a life here, and I sincerely hope that our housing situation will be a help rather than a hinderance moving forward.
Regret is a tricky thing. Maybe I’m not even defining it correctly. Maybe I do regret my mistakes... but how could I when they’ve led me to this amazing place? Does that mean that they weren’t actually bad decisions, just ones with unintended outcomes? But I still find myself wondering, what if? What if I’d taken the path of least resistance? How many times in the years to come will I find myself looking back on the decisions that seemed sensible to me now and thinking to myself, what if?
Word count: 1,102
"(a term that has since become vulgar in our private lexicon)"
ReplyDeletei liked this line a lot.
Ben
this post was very interesting to me. we all need to be able to make choices in our lives. some choices work out better than others but they all do lead us somewhere. they also give us perspective and experience which we can draw upon in our future choices. Dad
ReplyDelete