No Regrets (mistakes), Just Love (blessings)

Keeping in theme with delayed blog entries, I’m writing this as a reaction to the recent Miss Universe pageant with my beauty pageant fanatic hat on.

One of pastimes/ways to irritate people is to ask them random questions. While some are purely concocted from my imagination, some of them have actually been derived from past beauty pageants such as “What is the essence of a woman?” (can you say 1994?) and “What makes you blush?” If I haven’t been hit by the time I finish the question, people usually answer them with a grain of truth about their life. And being the competitive biatch that I am, I also try to answer my own question just so they could hear how a self-trained trying hard beauty pageant fanatic would answer it. Insert person slapping me hard at this moment.

Thus, I just had to answer Ms. Venus Raj’s question after the local news’ sensationalism of her supposed “major, major” blunder. I’ve read quite a lot of answers on the internet but I choose to have mine simple and void of highfaluting language. (Apparently not after I’ve finished writing it)

To refresh your memory, the question was "What is one big mistake that you have made in your life and what did you do to make it right?"

“Good evening, Las Vegas! A very good question to ask indeed. If ever there’s one mistake I consider the biggest, it’s treating mistakes as awful things that have hindered my development as an individual. Recently, I’ve realized that mistakes are always blessings in disguise since we learn from them and become better individuals. I wouldn’t become the person I’m becoming and meant to become if it weren’t for the mistakes I’ve made in the past. Thus, a simple rule, count your mistakes as blessings and count your blessings! And be thankful of course! Thank you very much!”

Your thoughts, dear reader? Too saccharine for your taste? Haha. But that’s how a pageant contestant should answer. Well, might be too long. What the heck?! Moving on…

Living in this day and age where fierce competition devours those who commit even the most trivial of mistakes, it’s difficult to make room for error. Sometimes, one should even get it on the first run or else you’re deemed as slow and incompetent. Charging it to experience seems more of an excuse rather than a typical humane course of action. If you let this thinking seep into your ego, then you’re definitely in danger of losing belief in yourself. It could very well all go downhill from there and eventually end in an abyss of self-doubt and blame.

If you feel that you’ve made far too many mistakes and you’re on the verge of breaking down, sit down, breathe and tell yourself, “Nobody’s perfect. I’m human and I’m not perfect but I’m blessed.”

List down the mistakes you’ve committed and see how they all positively contribute to who you are right now. No matter how trivial it helped, it still did and you have to thank yourself for committing that mistake for you wouldn’t learn what you did without that experience. Afterwards, reflect on how these are really blessings in disguise. And laugh and/or smile for you became a better person because of these mistakes.

Then, list down all the blessings you’ve received in the past year, month, week or even day and be thankful for the blessings you’ve been showered with. Repeat process every time you try to bang your head for committing yet another mistake until you’ve finally realized how every waking moment of your life is a blessing!

We are all blessed even in the simplest of ways. We always just have to remember it and count our blessings especially in moments when we feel that the whole world is ganging up on us.

If you know me and my blog site from before, you may have known my entry about a certain someone being tagged as the biggest mistake of my life. Of course, back then, I was this brooding, depressed and vengeful college kid so absorbed in his self-inflicted misfortune. But things have changed. (Hopefully!) Right now, I’m just thankful for everything that has happened in my life and count all the blessings and blessings in disguise that have come my way. And definitely, one of those blessings in disguise is you. You know who you are even if you won’t probably even bother to read this. (spiteful much?)

But yeah, I’ve learned a lot from that experience with you and have considered them as blessings that have helped me realize that I am blessed. I have always been and always will be. Hopefully, you do too.

And as my favorite line from Katy Perry’s chart-topping Teenage Dream would go,

“No regrets, just love.”