REGRET...

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A few years back I wrote a screenplay, called the BUTT MUFFLER, a comedy with Chris Farley in mind, and won a screenwriting contest.  The prize wasn't anything big, just dinner with other finalists at Planet Hollywood.  I was extremely excited I had won but unfortunately the day of the celebratory dinner I was scheduled to work.  So here I was twenty-five or twenty-six years old and more devoted to my J-O-B than to my L-I-F-E.

I did not go to the dinner and collect my prize (hamburger), instead I went to work at my job in a dingy cold meat department to clean slop, blood, and meat  remnants (hamburger) off the floor...When I told some people they said I should have called out, that I was crazy for not going to something so cool.

To this day of all the things in my life that I have missed out on this is the only regret I really have.  All other things I slowly through time and lucid seeing, realized were not good for me or were never meant for me, but this prize was and I was so institutionalized that I missed out on it.

There is a great passage in Shawshank Redemption that I always remember... 

RED: Heywood, enough. Ain't nothing wrong with Brooksie. He's just institutionalized, that's all.
HEYWOOD: Institutionalized, my ass.
RED: Man's been here fifty years. This place is all he knows. In here, he's an important man, an educated man. A librarian. Out there, he's nothing but a used-up old con with arthritis in both hands. Couldn't even get a library card if he applied. You see what I'm saying?
FLOYD: Red, I do believe you're talking out of your ass.
RED: Believe what you want. These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. After long enough, you get so you depend on 'em. That's "institutionalized."
JIGGER: Shit. I could never get that way.
ERNIE: Say that when you been inside as long as Brooks has.
RED: Goddamn right. They send you here for life, and that's just what they take. Part that counts, anyway. 


Avoiding institutionalization can be hard as our jobs are such a big part of our lives and can even become our LIFE...
But it's important to stop missing out on great opportunities for fear of leaving the safe harbor. So when the GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP comes back around I will definitely be having a hamburger at Planet Hollywood. 

Maybe i'll regret it with some heart burn later but it will be more like what the BUTT-HOLE SURFER'S said, "It's better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do."