Sometimes What Hurts Is Not Trying When We Had The Opportunity

Intuition speaks to us almost all the time, but we don’t always listen to it. Presentiments are like rumors that you hear when you put your ear to a seashell. They are there, but we do not always decipher their language until one fine day, we understand what they wanted to say to us: “Do it, dare, take the path of happiness”.

Among the many and singular experiences of the emotional world, one finds of course this strange feeling which consists in looking behind oneself and realizing many things. One of them is finding out too late what you already knew at that time. A trip for which we should have bought a ticket, a face and a name that we should never have loved or a lock in which we should never have inserted the key.

“It is with logic that we prove and with intuition that we find.”

-Henri Poincaré-

Why are we doing this? Why don’t we act in accordance with our hunches or desires of the moment? It must be understood that we are not infallible. Moving forward in life is like stepping on the rocks that cross a river. Some will be safer than others, and sometimes it will be necessary to trust our instincts to take a risky but obvious leap.

At other times, however, there is no other option but to take a step back and regain balance. We are not always prepared for these big steps even if once told us that it is the best for us. Instead of lamenting, instead of immersing ourselves in the sad and perpetual melody of “I could have done it and I didn’t do it”, it is necessary to establish new perspectives.

We invite you to reflect on this subject.

The lost moment and the melancholy “me”

Let’s start by being objective: there are trains that never come back. Surely there have been many proposals made to you in your work, and the one you never dared to accept because it forced you to go far will never come back. A lot of people will come into your life again, but never that heartfelt voice that promised you the best for you, and that you are going to let go. Now, be careful; just letting go of a concrete opportunity does not imply that other different but equally interesting opportunities will not emerge.

Looking in the rearview mirror of life often causes us to fall into a strange spell. We end up thinking that what we did or didn’t do at the time could have made us genuinely happy. Why did I let this go when it was the best thing for me? Why did I decide to do this or this when my inner self was telling me it was not good for me? These kinds of thoughts that lead us to emotional drift have a name: they are counterfactual thoughts.

When we start to speculate by imagining what might have happened, we are applying counterfactual thinking. It is a mechanism through which the human being imagines, visualizes or constructs alternatives to facts and events that have already passed. They are activated following a failed goal, a lost relationship, a dream evaporated due to lack of courage, to give shape, via the imagination, to what should have happened.

There are many people who live immersed, mentally, in this kind of “multiverse” or multiple universes where different “selves” think about “what could have happened but which did not happen”. Yet the only thing they get is to completely dilute their identity. Remember what Heidegger said on this subject: the human being is destined to renew his nostalgic – and sometimes dramatic – past for the benefit of a more promising and wise future.

The voice of intuition that we don’t always listen to

We can compare the beginning of our forebodings to this rumor that we listen to when we put our ears to a seashell. You can hear it, there is no doubt, but you never quite know what it is and where it comes from. Know that the murmurs of seashells do not come from the sound of the sea or from our imagination. It is in fact the air from the outside which vibrates on this semi-closed object. The shell acts as an amplifier.

With forebodings, it’s the same. We have the feeling that we hear a rumor without giving it much importance. However, this is how intuitions are built: an external element interacts with our heart, with our mind, to make contact with our unconscious being. It is then that an inner voice vibrates to give us a concrete message in accordance with our identity: “Do it, this is your OPPORTUNITY!”

Sometimes ignoring that little voice has a consequence we already know: regrets. Malcolm Galdwell, sociologist and expert in this field, indicates that the messages that intuition sends are difficult to decode. We don’t always listen to them, we don’t always want to listen to them because the logic or the pressure of those around us is too heavy. This is something that we can practice little by little over time, being more receptive, freer and more aware of ourselves.

It is also clear that “this voice” is often wrong, but if there is something that really hurts, which is extremely heavy and which tears the soul, it is precisely the fact of being wrong at one point. given. What hurts is that we didn’t try when we had the chance.

Images by Philipp Klarebone, Frap Carré Art