Not all 8a.m's are equal

How come 8a.m. on Tuesday is considered to be late, but not 8.am. on Thursday?

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I'm starting to realize, and you will realize (if you have a decent set of parental units like mine) that your parents are right 80% of the time up till the time when you start being an adult.

My parents were fully prepared to see my repeat a year of college - never passing economics, doing badly in geography (despite being a history student all along), rebelliously going out with boys, skipping/ late for school. In this very misguided phase of my life, they never fueled by rebelliousness by grounding me further. My mom was even very supportive on the day of getting my A level results by saying "No matter what happens, just come home. We'll work your options out together." Yet miraculously, last minute efforts to focus was sufficient to see myself into university. Immediately after seeing these results, they put a damper on my celebratory spirits by saying (nagging) that if I focused myself better I would have done better. I had wanted to do too many things - meet boys, get into a special program in university, go to church every weekend and spending the whole day there. What did I really want? I wanted everything, to do everything, and was almost left with nothing.

Right now, I'm seeing the exact thing happen to someone I consider close to me. A collision waiting to happen. After trying to guide her to an answer, I have now decided to silently step back. Not wanting her to be harmed from her own indecision or lack of action has in turn made me rather tired. Tired of seeing the effects of non-action spillover to other parts of her life, helping find leads, narrowing down key decision factors, worrying if she will be too late to switch careers. It's the case of 皇上不急，太监急; if the emperor is not in a hurry, why should others be?

This is probably how envy and regret is derived - you look at other people's lives and wonder why they have what you want. And you wonder and wonder, what could you have done (action) at that time ('cos it's all about timing baby).