The Years I Cannot Get Back

I have been thinking about regret.

Not just the regret of making a wrong decision, but of realising you had opportunities to make a different one and didn’t.

Because someone told you to be patient, to manage, to pray, to have faith, and you did.

Until one day, you looked around and realised that the years had passed, nothing much had changed, and everyone who encouraged you to endure had continued living their own lives.

Life na per head.

I know a woman in her sixties whom people describe as bitter.

She talks about her marriage often. About the sacrifices she made, the opportunities she turned down, the years she spent waiting for things to get better, and people are tired of hearing it.

They say she complains too much, that she should let go of the past, that there’s no point talking about things she cannot change and perhaps they’re right about the last part. She cannot change the past. But I wonder whether the people who call her bitter have ever really considered what she’s grieving.

She married at 21.

At an age when many people are still discovering themselves, she was already making decisions that would shape the rest of her life. Then came years of separation and uncertainty. She waited, fought for the relationship, sacrificed financially and turned down opportunities to begin again. And when the waiting ended, the life she had hoped for didn’t quite begin.

Instead, there were more responsibilities. More sacrifices and more reasons to be patient. She worked, provided and found ways to keep her family going, sometimes at enormous personal cost. And through it all, she hoped that someday things would be different.

I wonder how many times she told herself, Just a little longer.

Today, she is older, unwell and physically diminished by the life she has lived, And she talks. Oh, she talks about what she endured, what she could have done differently and the life she might have had.

People call it bitterness but I wonder whether some of it is grief. Because what do you call the pain of mourning a life you never got to live? A life that was not taken from you in one dramatic moment, but surrendered gradually. Through one more year of waiting, one more opportunity declined, one more sacrifice made in the hope that things would improve. Until the years became decades, and suddenly, there was no going back.

I think that’s one of the cruelest things about regret. It often comes with the clarity you desperately needed years earlier. 

You can see the warning signs now. You remember the moments when you wanted to walk away. The conversations, the advice, the assurances. You remember what you knew but refused to accept. And perhaps you even remember the exact moment when you could have chosen differently. But you didn’t.

Now, you cannot be 25 again, you cannot return to 30 and make another decision and you cannot reclaim the energy, opportunities or experiences that belonged to a particular season of your life.

People will tell you it’s never too late, and sometimes, they’re right. But I have learned that sometimes, it is too late for certain things. I wish we could acknowledge that without rushing to make everyone feel better.

There are opportunities that expire, experiences that cannot be recreated, years that cannot be recovered, no matter how much wisdom we gain from losing them. And I don’t think we should dismiss that loss by insisting that everything happens for a reason. Because the truth is that sometimes, things happen because we made choices. 

We may have made those choices with limited information, or maybe because we were afraid, or probably because we trusted people who didn’t understand what they were asking us to endure. This last part really troubles me because it’s easy to tell someone to manage when you are not the one managing.

Easy to recommend patience when you’re not the one waking up every morning to the same circumstances. 

Easy to say, Have faith, when you’re not the one carrying the consequences of what you’re asking someone else to call faith.

And isn’t it interesting how some people encourage others to tolerate things they would never accept for themselves?

They’ll tell a woman to stay, to pray harder, to be more understanding, to think about the children. And perhaps, years later, when she has become exhausted and resentful, those same people will wonder why she’s so bitter.

Madam, you’ve talked about this enough.

You need to move on.

You can’t keep living in the past.

Haba na!

You encouraged her to spend years enduring a situation, and now you’re impatient with how long it’s taking her to come to terms with those years?

Of course, not everyone who advised her to stay was necessarily wrong at the time. Some genuinely believed things could improve. Others may not have understood the full situation. And ultimately, the decisions were hers.

That’s the uncomfortable truth.

People can advise you, love you, pray with you and walk beside you but nobody can experience your life on your behalf.

Nobody else feels where your shoe pinches quite the way you do. And when everyone goes home, you remain inside your own life.

Life na per head.

I wonder whether that is what this woman has finally understood. That the people whose opinions mattered so much when she was younger were never going to live the life those opinions helped shape.

Perhaps she’s angry with them. Perhaps she’s angry with her husband. Perhaps she’s angry with herself.

I suspect the last one may be the hardest.

Because how do you forgive yourself for the years you believe you gave away? How do you stop thinking about the person you might have become? How do you look at your younger self and resist the urge to ask, Why didn’t you leave?

I don’t have an easy answer.

And I hesitate to tell someone who has spent decades enduring disappointment that she should simply choose happiness. As though happiness were waiting somewhere and she had merely refused to collect it.

But I also wonder what happens when regret becomes the only story we tell about our lives.

When every conversation returns to what we lost. When the people around us begin to withdraw because they no longer know what to say.

Perhaps that’s another tragedy.

The woman who spent so many years feeling unsupported may now find herself increasingly alone because her pain has become difficult for others to sit with.

I don’t think calling her bitter helps. But I also don’t think resentment should be allowed to consume whatever remains of her life.

Both things can be true.

She has every reason to grieve what she lost. And she deserves whatever peace is still possible for her. Not because the past no longer matters, but because it has already taken so much.

I think about the young woman she once was.

Twenty-one and full of whatever hopes she carried into marriage. I wonder what she imagined her life would look like at sixty.

Whether she pictured herself resting, enjoying the fruits of her labour, surrounded by the comfort of a life built together.

And I wonder what she would say if she could sit across from that younger version of herself today.

Would she tell her to leave? Would she tell her to wait, but not forever? Or would she simply hold her and cry? I don’t know.

But I think about the people who are still young enough to make decisions this woman wishes she had made.

The ones who know something is wrong but keep postponing a decision because someone has told them to endure. And I want to ask them something. Not whether they should leave. I don’t know their circumstances well enough to decide that. But whether they have considered what their lives might look like if nothing changes.

Not next month, not next year, but ten years from now, or even twenty.

Because patience can be a beautiful thing. Faith, too, but neither should require us to stop thinking, asking questions or acknowledging reality.

As for the woman everyone calls bitter, I wish she could find some tenderness for the young woman who made those decisions, even if she can never agree with them. I wish the years she has left could hold something other than regret.

I don’t know whether that will happen.

But when she talks about the years she cannot get back, I find it difficult to tell her to stop.

Perhaps she’s still trying to understand how she got here.

And perhaps, before asking her to move on, we could acknowledge that she has lost something she can never recover.

Time. Her time. And no amount of advice can give it back.

Taking Notes From Joseph

“The part of Joseph’s story nobody talks about is the enemies he must have made the day he was elevated to second only to Pharaoh. Prisoner to prime minister just like that? It’s almost like an intern becoming deputy CEO overnight.

“Pharaoh had military generals and probably a chief of staff. How do you think they would have felt about the sudden promotion of a former prisoner over them? The Bible didn’t capture it, but imagine the resistance he may have faced.”

This was my brother speaking to me.

“You know I’ve never heard that story told from this angle before,” I responded, nodding. “Where did you hear or read about it?”

“Nowhere. It just came to me as we were speaking. So as I encourage you, I’m also edifying myself,” he said.

“Oh, and there’s Potiphar and his wife. The Bible never recorded her being repentant of her actions or admitting that she lied against Joseph. Imagine what they must have thought when they heard he had become prime minister. What if people began asking questions about his past?” I added.

“Exactly! And only Joseph and Potiphar’s wife knew what really happened. Imagine people trying to use that accusation to discredit him.”

“And Joseph may even have struggled with managing a nation,” I continued. “Yes, he managed Potiphar’s house and had responsibilities in prison, but managing an entire country? That’s a different ball game. The Bible didn’t capture those struggles, if there were any.”

Then my brother raised another question.

“Why do you think the Israelites were eventually made slaves? The Bible tells us that another Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph and became afraid of the Israelites. But imagine if some of the resentment towards Joseph had been passed down through generations. That’s to tell you that some battles can be transgenerational.”

This conversation between my brother, a medical doctor, and me came up during a tête-à-tête. I had been battling a severe cough and he had come to give me a new set of medication because the ones initially prescribed were not doing much for me.

The lens through which he viewed the very popular Bible story opened up new layers and the uncomfortable possibility that elevation comes with challenges we rarely hear about.

We know Joseph’s story. The betrayal by his brothers, Potiphar’s house, the false accusation, prison, the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams and finally, the palace.

But what happened after Pharaoh placed his ring on Joseph’s finger?

The Bible doesn’t tell us that Joseph faced opposition from Pharaoh’s officials, but I wonder how easily everyone accepted the sudden elevation of a foreigner and former prisoner to a position of such enormous authority.

The cost of your elevation may be someone else’s disappointment. Your promotion may represent the loss of another person’s ambition, influence or opportunity. And the battle may become even fiercer when those watching believe you do not deserve what you have received.

How dare you, a prisoner, become comfortable in the palace?

What makes you think you deserve a place at the table with men who may have known royalty all their lives?

Why should anyone take instructions from you when your background is questionable and your qualifications may be nothing close to what Egypt offers?

And to make matters worse, an ex-convict? One who was accused of attempting to rape his master’s wife?

You must be joking if you expect a red carpet.

Of course, these are imagined conversations. Perhaps Joseph never encountered any of this. But knowing human nature, I don’t think the questions are entirely far-fetched.

And while we are imagining the reactions of those around him, I wonder about Joseph himself.

Did he ever feel overwhelmed? Did he struggle with decisions? Did he have to earn the confidence of people who had spent years in positions of authority before he arrived?

We know how his story turned out, but I wonder what the days between his appointment and the eventual success looked like.

It’s interesting how we celebrate elevation without giving much thought to what happens afterwards. We pray for growth, for opportunities, for the kind of breakthrough that leaves people wondering how it happened. But the responsibilities that accompany those opportunities, the relationships that change and the adjustments we have to make rarely feature in those prayers.

And perhaps that is where the need for wisdom becomes even greater.

As our conversation continued, I found myself thinking about the people we surround ourselves with, especially when navigating unfamiliar circumstances.

I told my brother that with time and experience, I was beginning to realise that friendships evolve. People who understood us perfectly in one season may not necessarily understand the realities of another. Not because they are bad people or have become less valuable, but because life changes.

Sometimes, you need people who have experienced enough to understand context, who can be objective without being judgmental, and who can tell you the truth without having an interest in the outcome.

Later, I shared the conversation with a friend and we found ourselves discussing this same need. To have people with whom you can speak freely, who can disagree with you without condemning you, and who won’t simply tell you what you want to hear.

And I wondered whether Joseph had people like that.

We know he had Pharaoh’s confidence and the authority to make decisions that affected an entire nation. But who could he speak to when he was uncertain? Who could tell him he was wrong? Who could challenge his thinking without being afraid of his position?

I wish I could have just one conversation with Joseph.

Not about the dreams or how he got into the palace. We know those parts of his story.

I want to know what happened afterwards.

Perhaps he would tell me that none of the difficulties I imagined ever happened. Or perhaps he would have stories that would make me wonder how he managed it all.

I don’t know.

But I suspect that if we could hear more about the days Joseph spent in the palace, and not just the extraordinary day he entered it, there would be quite a few lessons to learn about leadership, relationships and the responsibilities that come with growth.

And to think that all of this came from a conversation with my brother, who had only come to treat my stubborn cough.