I looked down. Printed neatly in red ink were the words: If only.

“ You'd be amazed,” said the Old Man. “ if you knew how many thousands of times I've sat in this chair and listened to woeful sentences beginning with those two words.‘If only,' they say to me,‘I had done it differently--or not done it at all. If only I hadn't lost my temper, said the cruel thing, made that dishonest move, told that foolish lie. If only I had been wiser, or more unselfish, or more self-controlled.' They go on and on until I stop them. Sometimes 1 make them listen to the recordings you just heard. ‘If only,' I say to them, ‘you'd stop saying if only, we might begin to get somewhere!' ”

The Old Man stretched out his legs. “ The trouble with ‘if only,' ” he said, “ is that it doesn't change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way--backward instead of forward. It wastes time, In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock, an excuse for not trying any more.

“Now take your own case: your plans didn't work out. Why? Because you made certain mistakes. Well, that's all right: everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are what we learn from. But when you were telling me about them, lamenting this, regretting that, you weren't really learning from them.”

“ How do you know? ” I said, a bit defensively ．

“ Because,” said the Old Man,“ you never got out of the past tense. Not once did you mention the future. And in a way--be honest, now! --you were enjoying it. There's a perverse streak in all of us that makes us like to hash over old mistakes. After all, when you relate the story of some disaster or disappointment that has happened to you, you're still the chief character, still in the center of the stage.”

I shook my head ruefully. “Well, what's the remedy?”

“ Shift the focus,” said the Old Man promptly. “ Change the key words and substitute a phrase that supplies lift instead of creating drag.”

“ Do you have such a phrase to recommend? ”

“Certainly. Strike out the words ‘if only': substitute the phrase‘next time.'”

“ Next time? ”

“ That's right. I've seen it work minor miracles right here in this room. As long as a patient keeps saying 'if only' to me. He's in trouble. But when he looks me in the eye and says ‘next time,' I know he's on his way to overcoming his problem. It means he has decided to apply the lessons he has learned from his experience, however grim or painful it may have been ． It means he's going to push aside the roadblock of regret, move forward, take action, resume living. Try it yourself. You'll see.”

My old friend stopped speaking. Outside, I could hear the rain whispering against the windowpane. I tried sliding one phrase out of my mind and replacing it with the other. It was fanciful, of course, but I could hear the new words lock into place ³¹with an audible click．．．