Dear LPG,

I found the video that I have asked LPG to add to the end of this message online and it really got me to thinking about some things. It portrays the perfect boy meets girl film script with a few extra questions and the inevitable bit of a twist included. 

During lockdown we all had an extraordinary amount of extra time, and I know that I often found myself in the middle of doing something before getting lost in thought while I asked myself many of those really depressing questions that I will never find the answers to on my own.   I think that I am one of many people who spend too much time looking back over my life with much too much regret.

I have many friends who have told me that they have had seriously similar experiences and I think that one of the advantages, or disadvantages of retirement is that there is a lot of time for doing just that at the best of times without the added enforced extra thinking time that Covid-19 afforded us.

For me, and so many others who can relate to those experiences that I am referring, I think that the saddest part of the experience is often the amount of regret that such thoughts provoke, and I am sure that depression often starts there too.

The video got me thinking about how you measure a successful life and why human nature so often leaves so many of us older life-assessors with so much regret. 

When such thoughts get in the way of our lives I suspect that the negativity that we often feel is more to do with where we think we have ended up in spite of where we have been throughout the years. 

I suggest writing about some of the little bits of positivity that life has offered us as therapy and I can hear readers saying, ‘I could not do all that writing’, but recording little parts of the story on paper or even an audio recording can help you to see the little successes that make up the positivity in every life and inspire you to see the whole much more positively.

Imagine that Pierce Morgan is asking the questions and remember your life is every bit as important as those of the celebrities that he has interviewed to date.

HS, Forest Hill

HS leaves the video that got him thinking….

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