Things that are finished and cannot be undone, should not be bothered with. You should take the chance to learn from it so that you can avoid doing it again. But you should not try to change it when there is no possibility to do so. Needles worrying is a waste of time. I know that it is not easy to let things go.

Things bother a person for a reason. But often, it’s not for the reason people think it is. Most people keep playing around with the question ‘what if?’. Like having an answer to that question will solve the worrying. But I think most people already know that having an answer to that question doesn’t make things easier. It makes matters worse. Now you know what you should/could have done. Now you start blaming yourself of being a fool for not knowing it when it happened.

It is easy to know what you should have done when you have time enough to think about it for the 10th time.

The fact is, you needed to make a decision, and you did the best you could at the moment with the time and information you had.

Maybe you were having a bad day and lashed out at someone. But now, when you are having a good day, you think bad about it. You shouldn’t have lashed out. But it’s easy to say that when you have cooled down and think back to the moment when your head was filled with emotions.

If not to worry? Then what to do?

Worrying about what you did wrong doesn’t solve the problem. Going back to the person that you offended and saying sorry does solve the bad blood that existed. Showing that you know that you did something wrong is an excellent step to solve the problem for the other person. Depending on what went wrong, it’s possible that no solution is needed — the act of feeling and expressing that you feel bad about it and that you are willing to correct it.

Let’s get serious

If what went wrong is of a more serious nature, like you have crashed your parent car because you were driving drunk. Then saying sorry will be a good start, but it will not be sufficient. You need to show that you will take actions to repair the damage and also take actions so that the event won’t repeat.

3 things need to be done:

• Admit you did something bad.

• Show that you want to correct it.

• Prevent it from happening again.

Nobody cares for excuses that you didn’t want to drink, but your buddies made you or that the car was terrible, to begin with. The point is, you knew the car and your friends beforehand and failed to prevent the event from happening. You can exchange the car for a helicopter and the friends with a clown, and your parents will be just as mad. You will have a worse time explaining it to the local police, but your parents won’t care about that either.

That’s why it doesn’t matter to try to change the past. Change it all you want, they will still be mad about it. You didn’t take your responsibilities, and the more you try to blame it on someone or something else, the more the counterparty will be mad at you. They are not angry at the person that caused the accident; they are mad at you for being in it with their property, which they lend to you in good faith. If it wasn’t your fault, then why would they trust you with their car ever again? You can’t prove that it won’t happen again. You just showed that you can’t do anything about it. Or worse, you won’t do anything about it even if you could, just because you say it is not your fault.

It’s all about what they think of you

Even though something happens that isn’t your fault; it is still your responsibility to bring that car back in the same condition that you got it. That was the deal. Change your friend, change your drinking habits, change your driving style. It doesn’t matter what you change, but change something that the counterparty will see as a solution that will prevent the same event from happening again. The same mistake cannot happen again, because you will prevent it from happening again.

If the counterparty has faith in you that you will prevent the past from happening again, then 2 of the 3 conditions have been met, to get your forgiveness. The 3rd is that you have to pay for the mistake. If you crashed your parent car, then you will make it so that they have their car back, or a new car, or something that can replace it. That doesn’t mean that you have to pay for everything.

I think the parents will understand that a kid that borrows his parent’s car, doesn’t have enough money to buy a car. Otherwise, he would have done that already and crashed his own car. Just show that you want to make it right, that you want to work to repay the car. Maybe it can be as simple as taking out the trash for the rest of your life. That is one burden that your parents won’t have to deal with anymore. So the burden of the crashed car just got exchanged for the burden of the trash if the parents see that as a good or equal deal. Then you are off the hook.

What if there is no solution?

More serious problems need more serious solutions. But the solution always comes in 3 steps. If you get someone pregnant and don’t want to be the father, but the mother wants to keep the child. Let’s assume that it was your fault. Then you need to take responsibility for the child well-being. You got to be the father, whether you want it or not. The first step is to apologize to the mother that you don’t want to raise the child. Also, explain the reasons why. Someone’s life will get a lot harder, make sure it is not the child’s life, it has nothing to say in the matter. Find a way to make up for the fact that she will need to raise the child without you (this is step 2). That can be as simple as paying for the child. If the mother is okay with that, then you are in luck. If not, then you have to do more. It has to be a solution that after ten years still hold up. (My opinion is that the child is not the problem, but that the decision and wishes of the two parents are conflicting. This leaves the father with two possible solutions. Either ignore his own wishes or ignore the wishes of the mother. But in either case, both solutions will create a problem. If you have a religion that prevents you from doing what you want, then a solution is forced upon you. You still will have that problem to solve. Solve it before it reaches the child.)

This is only true if it was the father fault of getting the mother pregnant. If the fault lies with the mother, then blaming the father is just silly, as he did what he could to prevent becoming a father. The mother has no right to force the father into fatherhood, and thus she will need to perform the 3 steps to make up for the fact that she is pregnant and wants the father to adhere to her wishes.

In the man’s case, step 3 won’t be as clear, but it is still there. If you are going to play cowboy again with more women, then the mother of your child could be a torn in your life. She will warn other people about you. Telling other people that you are a loose cannon. Which in her eyes, would be true. Since you didn’t do anything different, you probably will get someone else pregnant and run off again. So you are a loose cannon. If you change your life so that you won’t get anyone pregnant by not putting yourself into a situation where it can happen again, then she will not be able to do that. She probably won’t even want to, as you have shown that you take responsibility for past and future events.

Without the 3rd steps, the mistakes of the past will keep haunting you, mostly because you didn’t solve the lasting effects from it. If you do resolve the effect, then the mistakes will faint into the past. You will still remember them, but they won’t hurt because you paid the prices that needed to be paid. The mistakes haven’t changed, but you did. You have become a better person because of them. You will not make the same mistake again and you probably better equipped for other mistakes as well.

PS: I don’t want to turn the discussion into a parenting or religious thing. I just took it as an example that has no clear solution. If there is no clear solution, then most humans blame the counterparty. Don’t be like that and keep a logical and solution-oriented view of things.