Nah. Reflection on the past isn’t the same as dwelling on the past. And admitting that you’d do things differently isn’t the same as regret. Sad emotion is something that’s in your head, and you can choose whether or not to associate it with those reflections.
I can’t say I have any regrets about my equestrian life, but were I to live it all over again, I’d change things. Namely, I’d spend less money on lessons.
The input I got as a teenager was not worth the hard earned minimum wage dollars I put toward it – in retrospect I’d save most of the money I spent learning bad habits like see-sawing and put it toward a better helmet and college savings.
With my current horse I’ve cut pretty much everything non-essential from my budget to afford to take lessons with the best trainers I can find. I don’t regret “splurging” on top shelf instruction, but somewhere along the line I got the idea that I needed to be in at least weekly lessons to get where I wanted to go. In retrospect I believe there was always a physical ceiling on what my horse and I could achieve, and I’ve observed that we stall out or backslide with layups and cross-country moves and other episodes that require total curtailment of riding, but not so much with regular but less frequent instruction. I suspect I’d have been just as happy getting to our plateau point more slowly through less frequent instruction and putting some of that money toward things that would improve other parts of my life.
I’m in a new chapter of my life in many respects right now, and I expect that the next equestrian chapter is not too far off. Reflecting on these things is useful for figuring out what my priorities are and making decisions about what I’ll do with the next horse that comes into my life. I don’t see anything sad about that.
