If only.

If only you’d started three years ago.

If you’d learned just 5 kanji a day starting three years ago, you’d know 5000 kanji by now.

You know what, though? That’s not your problem. What you did(n’t do) three years ago is not what’s wrong with you. What you’re doing right now is what’s wrong with you: living in regret.

Do you own a time machine?

I’m gonna take a wild guess and say “no”. Not only do you not own one, but I will bet beaucoup bucks that you will never own one. Private jet? Yes. Time machine? Iffy.

So, why are you making plans that would require a time machine to carry out?

Regret is just information you didn’t have at the time.  What you’re doing right now is what’s wrong with you. Because, guess what? Three years ago, you were sitting there wishing, I dunno, that you’d started three years earlier than that. Or (worse) that your parents had raised you in Japan, or some other such silliness.

As Yoshiko TAOKA shares on page 154 of her wonderful “Lanchester Strategy” manga book ( [そうなのか! ランチェスター戦略がマンガで3時間でマスターできる本 (アスカビジネス) | 田岡 佳子 |本 | 通販 | Amazon] amzn.to/2ELwvjg ), you want to “be zero-based”. Every new day, you metaphorically zero out the past. Conceptual reset. Every new day is fresh. New opportunities to improve (in our less perceptive moments, we call these “problems” 😀 ). Today, you’ve got to prove your commitment to Japanese by showing up to it. By playing it. By repping it. By writing it out by hand. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Today.

Make action plans that use the resources you DO have, not the resources you DID have or COULD have or SHOULD have*. Do. Here. Now. You can (and, in some cases (e.g. when it comes to building your self-efficacy/confidence/identity/vision/self-fulfilling prophecies, actively should) delude yourself in any other way, but not in this. In this, be grounded like Bart Simpson. In this, be rooted like an oat tree. Ironically, that very grounding, that seeing and using of what is right in front of you, will enable you to fly like a condor.

“Reality” is often used as a negative term, a by-word, especially (though by no means exclusively) by rappers. We are enjoined to “get real” and “be realistic”. An overwhelming painful experience is jokingly described as being “too real”. A situation that takes a rapid turn for the worse is said to have (excrementally) “gotten real”. A clinically depressed person with a  large vocabulary is called a “realist”.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The “reality” I’m talking about is neutral and even positive. It is what you DO have. And it is very real. Easily as real and as — and often realer than — the comically dystopian “rawness” that we incorrectly dub “reality” or “realism” (raw food and cooked food are equally “real”; many foods have to be cooked to be edible). If life is an RPG, then this neutral-to-positive reality is about the time, tools, energy, resources, knowledge that ARE (not were or will be, but are) in your bag. This is about your assets, not your liabilities. Your blessings that that song encourages you to count, not your…non-blessings.

How and why is is that being grounded in positive reality sets you free to fly? Why so paradoxical? Well, it’s like this…

You see, limits are your friend. Limits will make you unlimitedly awesome. Limits aren’t here to screw you over; they’re your canvas and easel, onto which you get to paint the future you want. Having (or even being able) to paint onto the whole universe would suck. Too big. Too overwhelming. Limits make life easier by lifting the burden of too many options and possibilities. To be able to do anything and everything all the time is to be able to do nothing — like one of those overlong restaurant menus, or Netflix movie options, or women with ant-like bum implants: it’s too much.

Sidenote: Apartment hunting in Tokyo is always easy for me because I have to find a place that takes cats; that instantly cuts the search space down by more than 90%.

When you think about it, in a way, regret is a form of self-directed envy. You’re envious of your idealized past self. Leave that guy alone, man. He never existed. He’s a construct that is distracting you from the very useful reality that is front of you — the reality that, at this rate, you’ll be idealizing as having been perfect three years from now. Don’t do it, mate. Be here. Love here. Love what you’ve got. Use the crap out of it.

Reality — the positive reality we’re talking about — is positive**, but it is never perfect***. As David Deutsch opines in “The Beginning of Infinity”, it can always be improved — and that’s what’s so awesome about it. We need never be bored. There’s always something to do, namely, better. We can always improve (#kaizen #改善). At the same time, since positive reality is also always imperfect, we have no excuse to idealize or be envious of the past — it had flaws aplenty.

Etymology time! “Perfect”, didn’t originally mean “peak awesomeness”, it just meant “finished” — and that’s still the sense in which we use the p-word when talking about grammar and tenses. Real(lol)ize that you don’t need things to be “perfect,” because life isn’t over. It’s not finished. It’s not complete. The universe isn’t over. It’s an ongoing project. Only dead things are perfect.

Do you really want to go back to using an iPhone 4? Tiny screen? Really?

Then don’t idealize the past. Because sucky (relatively speaking) technology is one feature of it.

Ask a better question.

What’s right with you?

*Or (worst of all) comparing the resources other people have. Eff them. Ignore them. They’ve got their own battles to fight, obstacles to overcome. Run your race in your lane against yourself — race to beat your own average time.

**”Positive reality is positive”. The Noble Prizes for Obvious Studies are gonna flow thick and fast for this one.