I Could’ve Been An Astronaut!

I Could’ve Been An Astronaut!
(For The Daily Prompt: Regrets, I’ve Had A Few)
By Joseph E Rathjen
September 06, 2013

Whenever someone asks me what my biggest regret in life is, I always think back to when I was 17-years-old and almost got a job working for NASA. The more I think about it, however, the more I wonder where I would be now if it had actually happened the way I had hoped it would. But the more I think about it, the more that classic song by “Old Blue Eyes” (Frank Sinatra) keeps creeping back into my head, and the more I try not to, the more I find myself singing it.

“Regrets, I’ve had a few…But then again, too few to mention…“

As I hear the music, and pretend that I’m standing on the moon looking out at the earth all alone and with no landing lunar module to get back, the music suddenly gets louder…

“I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption…“

But then I start to cry when I begin to realize that I was part of an exemption. That’s why I’m now standing on the moon with no space suit in a weird fantasy where the only hope of getting back down to Earth is if Halley’s Comet suddenly comes whizzing by and lets me hitch a ride on it.

“I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway…“

If I had planned each charted course along the byway, I would probably have lived in a mansion back then somewhere down in Houston, Texas, and hanging out with my buddies Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and John Glenn. Instead, I’m standing on the moon with no tube food freezing my ass off.

“And more, much more than this, I did it my way…“

Okay, so maybe I did do it my way, but instead of fame and glory, now I’m sitting here writing this stupid blog post hoping someone in the blogosphere will like it.

I could on and no with the rest of this song, but why torture myself…and you. The simple fact of the matter is that I’ve learned after 57-years of life, that no matter how many regrets one has, it makes entirely no sense to cry over them. Every time you wake up in the morning is a new opportunity to do something great, meaningful, or something that will mean something special to someone – no matter how small or trivial it may seem to you at the moment.

So take my advice, lose those regrets, those jealousies, all that procrastination and resentments and get up and out and do something about it.

Life is not about what it could have been…it’s about what it could be…

P.S. (Okay, so I didn’t become an astronaut…but at least I don’t have to walk around for the rest of my life in diapers.)

© Joseph E Rathjen – All Rights Reserved – 2013

Joseph E. Rathjen is a book author and an Opinion Writer for 1World Online.

Here are some of my blogger friends thoughts on regrets:

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