What are your regrets?

While vacationing in London, my friends Lola and Obehi and I took a four day trip to Barcelona. It was a first visit to Spain for all of us and we made what I feel is the best decision to rent a car, and get a hotel in Malgrat del Mar, about an hour or less away from Barcelona. The town is a friendly tourist spot right by the beach and with close proximity to all Barcelona offers. Lots of tourists opt for sponsored bus tours into the city, but we felt independent enough to tackle the roadways and signs without a reasonable working knowledge of the Spanish language. Don't ask me how we did it, but we managed to take entirely different routes each time we went to and from Barcelona.

La Sagrada Familia.

We were welcomed by two good looking men at the concierge of our hotel, the Luna Club, a four-star hotel that's just 300m from the beach. We were justifiably tired when we arrived, so we didn't really appreciate the friendly nature of Mamadou until our last night in Spain when he and Said, a Moroccan, treated us to a pitcher of sangria while everyone else was seemingly asleep.

Mamadou on our last night.

Then he shared his story. A promising soccer player from Senegal who played with a first division Belgian club. Then suffered a career-ending knee injury. He relocated to France, before settling in Spain. Every where I go, I always seem to be drawn to people connected to some sport or the other. Many of them have stories like Mamadou's: a once promising athletic career now abandoned for a variety of reasons. Just like me.

Growing up in a family of athletes, playing sports came naturally to me. You name it, I played it. Well, OK, maybe not everything. But just about every major sport I played. I fostered dreams of setting a world record as the fastest female track & field athlete in the world. But after I graduated high school as a sports prefect, I gave up on everything. I still loved competing, but there just weren't concrete avenues to continue to pursue my dreams. By the time I moved to the U.S. I was a slightly overweight has-been who focused entirely on getting an education worth making my parents proud. I still have regrets about not continuing as a competitive athlete. And my regrets have a funny way of coming to light. I don't enjoy running on a track anymore (I run on a treadmill) because I feel like a failure. It's usually followed by a sense of remorse, and before you know it, I'm walking off the track well short of meeting my goal because I've mentally battered myself over the purpose of running.

Unlike Mamadou, there's nothing physically stopping me from resuming this athletic career if I choose to embrace the difficult rigors of getting back in ideal shape. But I somehow allow my regrets get the best of me. But when I asked Mamadou if he regrets losing out on the possibility of making millions, he hardly hesistated in responding no with a smiling face. There's a lot to be said about that. And even more to be learned. I got into sports journalism as a way to marry my past in sports to my future and I have no regrets about what I've accomplished so far. It's time for me to let go of my regret over never becoming a professional athlete, and like Mamadou, break into a smile when I think of how lucky I am to still remain in close contact with this industry.

Anyone care to share regrets you've had time letting go of?

I'll leave you with one of the many videos I shot while in Spain. For those of you expecting something close to my award-winning videos, let me issue this disclaimer. The videos were shot on my small Sony digital camera with 7.2 pixels, so they are not of the best quality. But they do the job. I'll share more stories from my adventures in Spain as I sift through pictures.