if there was a year in your life that you could go back to, what would it be? i would always say, 1997. it was a year of grand opportunities and missed chances. so many things i could have done and yet i chose to do otherwise. if regret was a word in my vocabulary, i could have said, without any hesitation, that i regret how that moment in time has affected the rest of my life. but regret is for losers, and no matter how bruised and bitter i may have become, i can’t just bow my head and accept defeat.

it’s not that i don’t like where i am right now, contentment has never been my best virtue so that’s not the issue, it’s just that that year is one of the biggest crossroad in my life. it’s like the choose your own adventure pocket book where you get to have different endings depending on your decisions: to fight it out with the big bad wolf or to run away and hide in the woods? i chose to hide in the woods, stay in my comfort zone, deny that i could ever be anything outside the little bubble that i invented and enclosed myself in.

now, eight years past i recall that little coin i flipped, what if i fought the wolf instead? yeah, i wouldn’t have met all those interesting creatures but hey, those kind of trees also grow in this part of the hundred acre land. i was just too much of a coward. i’ve always feared the unknown.

it’s really no fun to look back and think of all the has been and what could have been in your life, it get’s you all melodramatic and guilty but the good thing is, you get to contemplate on how you got here in the first place, that is especially helpful if you’re like me who just wakes up with a start every day and wonder: where am i? how did i get here? where am i headed?