One narrative that haunts both my running journey and my path to sobriety is the persistent question: Why did it take so long? Or its more insidious sibling: Why didn’t I start sooner? These aren’t just idle musings—they’re weights I’ve carried, examined, and tried to put down countless times. The standard response comes quick and well-meaning: If you’re happy where you are now, the path you took to get here doesn’t matter. And there’s wisdom there, undeniably. Through whatever combination of luck, grace, or divine intervention, I’ve reached this point, and most days I can recognize the profound gift in that simple fact.

But the human mind is a relentless excavator of pain, and mine has developed a particular expertise in unearthing what-ifs and might-have-beens. Left unchecked, these seemingly innocent questions transform into anchors, dragging me into depths where light struggles to penetrate. Through countless hours of sitting with these thoughts—both on trails and in quieter moments—I’ve come to understand something crucial about the nature of regret and resentment.

Regret, I’ve learned, is often a choice we make. It’s a story we tell ourselves about paths not taken, about versions of ourselves we could have been. We can choose to replay these narratives, to polish them like stones until they shine with painful clarity. But resentment operates differently. It arrives uninvited, takes root in places we didn’t know could harbor such feelings, and grows whether we want it to or not. It’s the body’s reaction to perceived injustice, to time lost, to opportunities missed not through choice but through circumstance.

This is where the real work lies—in understanding the difference between what we choose to carry and what attaches itself to us without permission. The challenge isn’t in avoiding these feelings entirely; it’s in developing the discernment to know which thoughts deserve our attention and which ones we need to let pass through us like weather. Some regrets serve as valuable teachers, guiding us toward better choices. Other regrets, and especially the resentments they spawn, are poison we drink hoping someone else will suffer.

The practice—and it is a practice—becomes about recognizing when we’re dwelling in questions that offer no constructive answers. It’s about understanding that while we can’t always control what thoughts or feelings arise, we can choose which ones to engage with, which stories to keep telling ourselves. This isn’t about toxic positivity or denying the reality of past mistakes. Instead, it’s about exercising a particular kind of discipline: the willingness to acknowledge these thoughts without letting them dictate our present or future.

This discipline manifests differently for each person. For me, it often emerges on long runs, where the rhythm of feet against trail creates space for both confrontation and release. Sometimes it’s in the daily choice to face forward rather than backward, to focus on the next step rather than the thousand steps that came before. It’s not about achieving some perfect state of acceptance—it’s about building the resilience to keep moving, even when the weight of what-ifs threatens to hold us in place.

The path forward isn’t about eliminating regret or resentment—these are as much a part of the human experience as joy or love. Instead, it’s about learning to carry these feelings without being carried away by them. It’s about recognizing that while we can’t always choose what happens to us or how we feel about it initially, we can choose what we do with those feelings, how we let them shape our present and future rather than define our past.