Everyone has some sort of regret in life. The car you never bought. The video game you didn’t play which turned out to be the next best thing. The date you never went on. The 14 beers you drank last night at a party even though you have to work the next day. But is it possible to live a life regret free?
I would say yes it is. There isn’t a day that goes by where I regret a decision I made. I’ve learned to accept my past for what it was. And more importantly I’ve learned to see how past events shaped my future. I learned how they made me a better person.
My biggest regret for a long time was being a screw up in school. I went to a university straight out of high school and screwed around. I didn’t focus on school work and my grades tanked. I didn’t get kicked out, but I was close. I really only did just enough to get by. I left the university after my freshman year of college and went to community college.
There I focused more on my schooling. I actually tried and I did well. The following year I went back to the same university. I was determined to do it right this time. And while I did better, it still didn’t matter in the end. My screw up from before meant I wasn’t able to get financial aid. No financial aid meant I couldn’t pay the tuition from the previous semester to be able to register for the next one. And that meant I was to return home again. This time for good.
It was a hard lesson to learn. One that took several years to finally understand. I don’t consider it a screw up anymore. I consider it a stepping stone. As an 18 year old I didn’t know what I wanted to do anyway. I went into college undecided. After that, I changed my major about 5 times. I wanted to do everything from psychology to journalism. But nothing seemed right. It just didn’t feel right for me.
I finally landed on movie and TV production and it’s something I have a huge passion for. I love telling stories and I love acting. This is something where I can tell stories and act. And more importantly I can create characters. Characters that reflect who I am and who I was. Characters that feel. Characters that can almost be real. And best of all, I can have these characters be the things I could never be.
To me, movie and TV production allows me to be the person I was always meant to be. I don’t have any regrets about the path I’ve taken. Because years later, I can see that without it, I don’t think I’d be where I am now.
Matt Jaku 