Not a believer in regrets or guilt. If you make your choices consciously then you are adult enough to live with those choices. If you can't live with it, don't do it. But then that generally requires some thought.

Not a believer in regrets or guilt. If you make your choices consciously then you are adult enough to live with those choices. If you can't live with it, don't do it. But then that generally requires some thought.

Or a great deal of beer.

Reading this depressing thread...... In short though it's not possible for me to turn back time as then my children would not exist as the events in my life I regret most and determined my current position were prior to their existence nor did any decisions I made have any influence in their outcome anyway since they were out of my control.. So no point really as that would require me to regret their birth and wish for something else so no use living that way..

I don't think it is a depressing thread, Warpspeed. I think it's an enlightening one. When you try to connect all the decisions of your past it tells a pretty good story of how things happen by chance and design. For example, had my first wife not decided to have an affair with some musician in her acting group I wouldn't have met the love of my life in my second wife. And, had my second wife been able to handle her grown son who was a druggie, we might still be married now. And, had that been the case, I never would have come to Thailand. Had I not learned to gamble at an early age, with the subsequent loss of all my allowance money, I wouldn't have learned the pitfalls of gambling later in life. Same with smoking. I tried it when I was 8 years old and hated it. Nobody could convince me later in my teenage years to try it again when I was susceptible to peer pressure.

Like someone already said, it is our past decisions that make us who we are today. Had I waited for Miss Perfect to come along, instead of marrying my first wife, I wouldn't have the great children I do, and the wonderful grand kids. Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones who have had a great life, and I have few regrets.

This poem I wrote tells it all

Shed no tears for me my friend

I’ve lived the life I chose

And the prickly pear I left behind

I once thought was a rose

Memories of a distant past

Haunt me occasionally

Then I look around and realize

I’m were I want to be

There’s much to learn and understand

Life’s messages are taught

With hurts and pains, and sometimes gains

It’s never done for naught

All I ask is one more ride

And reach the count of eight

Then I will smile and thank the Lord

For making the specter wait.

Lovely poem Ian, thanks for sharing it, I guess it just about sums it up for all of us.

I also tried smoking early on, later than eight though, and hated it which was probably the best thing as no amount of subsequent peer pressure would make me take it up.

I've never been a gambler though can appreciate the rush a good win gives. I did once place a bet on a horse, I can't remember it's name but they renamed it after the race anyway, to Pedegree Chum.

I think WarpSpeed's life must be almost a mirror of my own, no regrets either.

I know it's a hypothetical question but to have an effect you'd have to rewind your life but retain your experiences gained from it (which then leads to the great conundrum of time travel) otherwise it's the same entity with the same logic circuits facing the same situation. Inevitably it will be the same answer. Unless you mean, like some Pythonesque hand of God, you'd stop the train using influences from out in the ether. But if you did that and your earlier form got off the train and was run over by a bus how could you influence life from the future? Back to the conundrum.

Life is all about looking forward with confidence and hope built on the experiences of the past and looking back only to remember good times past.

two songs kind of apt.

always listen to them and they bring me right back on base when thinking about life!

Great songs!! Blasted my neighbours out with the first one... One guy even did a little jig outside my window!!

Shise, I must buy a camera!!

In 1956 on my Big OE in London, I met this lovely lass.

We went out, but thickhead ME neva realised her feelings towards myself till TOO LATE.

Well, I like others finished up with another love.

I still think of my unrequited love, Delia Pash, in London.

Only other thing is my dad letting me leave school at 14, bad mistake.

No point looking back, forward, just remember ya mistakes and avoid repeats.

Happy now with my lovely Filipina wife.

(Hafta say that, she is a member here in Bedlam... hehe)