One day in the epitome of your life, you let your worldly passions destroy your soul. You kill the hearts of those most dear to you and in the moment of desperation and desire to let go of the poison you have become; they leave you to construct better lives. They leave you to preserve their goodness that you keep trashing. They leave you to escape the addiction to substances they are prone to when they are with you. They leave you to escape toxicity that you bring the environment that you are in. they leave you to try and rebuild the little faith they have in life, and goodness and hope and love. And when they are gone, you lash out at everything and everyone. You are in a prison of your own rage and regret. You are on your own. No one wants to associate with you anymore. Your grandchildren cannot associate with you. Your children bang the door on your face. They want to live their lives free of the memories of you. They are happier and you are left out of the bubble of happiness. They are moving on and you are no longer in their circle. And in your prison of misery you carry regret around your neck. Weighing you down. No matter how much success you will ever achieve, there will be this big bane on your neck. The bane that reminds you of the things you could have but now can’t. The bane of the memories you can no longer create with those you love. The bane of the things that could have been but will never be. And all you can keep saying to yourself, is I am sorry. You wish you could turn back the clock, return that bullet in the gun, release your finger from the trigger, drop that gun from where you picked it from, not be in the murder scene in the first place, manage your anger, jealousy and passion, treat the people with love, honour and dignity as they ought to be treated, respect peoples’ decisions and happiness, and let them become the very best versions of themselves, without the aspect of control. Control destiny. Control happiness. Control emotions. Control events. Control circumstances. But it is all gone. You cannot undo it all. You appeared in the scene. Picked up the gun. Raised it. Pulled the trigger, and now everything in your life is defined by regret. That was the Life of Dan Scott in one tree hill.

Dan Scott had a high school sweetheart, Karen, and a wonderful big brother, Keith. He was very athletic. Played basketball and excelled at it. He got a university athletics scholarship and left, leaving his sweetheart pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy, Luke. Luke was fathered by his uncle, Dan Scott’s big brother Keith. He admired and respected Karen. Dan fell in love with Debbie in the first month of college. She got pregnant as well and gave birth to a baby boy, Nathan. Both children loved and excelled in basketball. Their rivalry became friendship and then brotherhood. On the other hand, Dan Scott was a Sociopath, as per Debbie. He drove everyone crazy with his cynicism, criticism manipulation and control. Debbie attempted to murder him, but eventually gave up on the idea. Instead she got into drugs and reckless life, all a way to ease the burden of living with Dan. His children loved to hate him. And when they got children of their own, they never let them associate with him. The children loved and adored their uncle Keith. Dan was jealous. Extremely Jealous. One day, as fate would have it, one of the students brought a gun to school and threatened everyone. Keith went to the scene to talk the kid out of shooting everyone. He, the kid, shot himself though. As Keith was beating himself up for not being able to help this kid, Dan Scott walked into the scene, picked up the gun and shot his brother.

He lived in misery the rest of his life. He tried to kill himself in his cell, but the bed sheet he had used to hang himself could not hold him. He tried again and failed. He eventually left jail, but no one wanted him back on their lives, no matter how much he proved he had changed. His sociopath tendencies always worked against him.

Such is life anyway. We mess up, we lose. We try to fix the unfixable and fail. and carry the bane of regret for so long.

However, as Bishop Dale Bronner says in his sermon, on my way up, when you slip, don’t slide. We make mistakes. But mistakes are not final. With sheer determination and a lot of effort we can make something of the rest of our lives. We can chart a path, have life giving visions of our new life and move in the direction of our new dreams. If we forever live in regret, we will not live at all. You will lose very important people in your life, or is it pseudo important, but as life will have it, we lose people along the way, but we can always carry them in our hearts. And as life will have it, others will walk into our lives as well. Its only in the darkest of nights, when you are alone and feel done for, that the stars shine the brightest, that you can dream again. What do you notice, the stars or the dark night? Let the stars lead you home. The greatest rewards come in doing things that scare us the most. Starting all over is scary, very scary. Challenge that fear though. You grow when you challenge the status quo. When you don’t you become bitter and cynical. And it is not a good place to be be. Being bitter and cynical is like a festering cancer, eating at you until you have nothing left. You have the rest of your life to make the rest of your life.