Last Light This Night

Tuesdays are one of my kids' nights -- I drove all over San Francisco's southern half to pick up my three youngsters, who attend three different schools, and bring them back to my house. As they dutifully worked on their studies, and dinner was simmering on our stove, I stepped out back to view the sunset.

This year to date is presenting many challenges; it also is pushing me to define my philosophy of life. You never have to do this when things are "normal," the only time you turn philosophical in my experience is when things are very, very good, or very, very bad.

My philosophy for what it's worth is this: It's time to get out of yourself when circumstances allow you to. These may prove to be rare opportunities. Step as far outside of your own shadow as you can and try to occupy the shoes of another.

A good person to pick might be someone who you feel has wronged you in the past. Now, rewind the tape, and play the scenes again from their point of view. You might come up with a different conclusion.

I have been wronged in my life, both personally and professionally. If I were an angel, that would be a scandal worth pursuing, but I have also wronged others.

Probably the only way to escape these circles of regret is to rewind the tape even more slowly, and see what you might have done differently had you any inkling of how this was all going to turn out.

In some ways, this resembles your final moments of clarity in this life, much as the setting sun lights up the western sky one last time before exiting from our view.

I have often said, in the past, that I had few regrets.

That is no longer true. I now have some monstrously huge regrets. I have made some monstrously huge mistakes, and by the time I came to realize that, it was too late to rewind any tape. The opportunity was gone.

If I seem melancholy on these fresh new days of a new year, it is because I am trying to incorporate my regrets into my own story of my own life. I do not mean this literally; my life is not a story, neither is yours, but since I am a writer, all I seem to have with me at the end are the stories I can tell myself -- or you.

In real life there are no fairy godmothers, there is little magic. But in fairy tales, sometimes you are granted one wish.

If you were granted one special wish, just one, from your whole life, what would it be? What would you change and why?

What would you not let that golden sun go down on before you had acted in some different way -- said a word, made a gesture?

This is new territory for me, both as a writer and a person. I am now exploring regret. But tonight, at least, the sun wouldn't wait for my exploration. It had another, far more important appointment to keep.

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