You Get One Chance (And No Time To Feel Sorry About Fucking It Up)
One of my favorite teachings from Gurdjieff to a young Fritz Peters
The writer Fritz Peters was just a young boy of eleven when his mom’s sister, the author Margaret Anderson, moved him to France in 1924, to live with the other student’s of Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development.
Given that Peters' father wasn’t much interested in him and his mom had suffered a protracted nervous breakdown, Anderson thought living with Gurdjieff would set a good example for her nephew.
This exchange between Peters and Gurdjieff happened after Fritz was given the assignment of working in the Institute’s garden one afternoon. Instead of completing his task, he blew it off, assuming he’d finish the work later when he was in the mood.
I thanked him for what he had said and added that I was sorry that I had not done my work in the garden and that I would do it properly in the future.
He brushed aside my thanks and said that it was useless to be sorry.
“Is too late for that now, and is also too late to do good work in the garden. In life never have second chance, only have one chance. You had one time to do good work in garden, for self; you not do, so now even if you work all your life, in this garden, cannot be same thing for you.”
“But also important not be ‘sorry’ about this; can waste all life feeling sorry.”
“There is valuable thing sometimes, thing you call remorse. If person have real remorse for something they do that is not good, this can be valuable; but if only sorry and say will do same thing better in future is waste of time.”
“This time is already gone forever, this part of your life is finished, you cannot live over again.”
“Not important if you do good work in garden now, because will do for wrong reasons—to try to repair damage which cannot be repaired ever. This serious thing.”
“But also very serious not to waste time feeling sorry or feeling regret, this only waste even more time. Must learn in life, not to make such mistakes, and must understand that once make mistake is made forever.”
From Fritz Peters’ book Boyhood With Gurdjieff
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