The Clean Slate

How one quote freed me from a lifetime of regret

All my life, I collected guilt and regrets like treasure.

Every wrong conversation. Every opportunity I torpedoed with my insecurity. Every friendship I torched with my trust issues. The times I lied and got caught. The times I embarrassed my family. The times people left, and the times I ran first.

I catalogued everything. My brain seemed wired for guilt trips.

And each time, I'd think: if I could just start over, if someone would just give me a clean slate, I'd get it right this time.

The fantasy was always the same. Wake up, and everyone's forgotten. The awkward thing you said doesn't exist anymore. The person you hurt doesn't remember. You get to try again - fresh, with all your current wisdom but none of the baggage.

Spoiler: that's not how life works.

I didn't know that then. So I drowned in guilt, regret, and shame. Sometimes it felt like I was trapped in a box filled with all these moments, and I couldn't breathe. Suffocating under the weight of who I'd been.

By my early twenties, I'd started to believe something dangerous: this is just who I am. I'm the person who screws things up. The person who says the wrong thing. The person too broken to be fixed. That became my identity. And once I believed it, I was stuck.

Everything began to crumble - my relationships, my confidence, even the parts of life I used to be good at.

I was desperate for a clean slate. I would have given anything to start over.

But it was around that time I started accepting a terrible truth: clean slates don't exist. That fantasy I'd been clinging to? It was just that - a fantasy. Which meant my regrets were unerasable. Permanent. The weight I'd been carrying? I'd carry it forever.

That realisation made everything heavier.

One summer afternoon, I was sitting alone in my childhood bedroom, googling random things - procrastinating, avoiding, distracting myself from the suffocating feeling in my chest. I don't remember what I was searching for. But I remember what I found.

A black and white quote on Google Images:

"You are under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago."

— Alan Watts

I froze. My mind went completely blank. Empty. Still.

I turned away from my computer and just... sat there. Witnessing my own blankness. Thinking: *Why am I not thinking anything?*

The quote didn't mean anything to me in that moment. It was just words. Maybe thirty minutes later, my mind started moving again.

“What does that quote mean?”

“You are under no obligation...”

“...to be the same person...”

“...you were 5 minutes ago.”

Who was I five minutes ago?

I was drowning. Heavy. Crying.

But... can I be a different person now?

Can I... laugh?

When that thought crossed my mind, I felt myself smile. It shocked me. I shouldn't be smiling. My life is not good. I shouldn't. I heard a voice inside - stern, punishing - telling me this wasn't allowed.

But I felt something else too.

A sense of freedom. Permission I didn't know I could give myself.

And then I started laughing…Just... laughing. At the absurdity of it all. At my desperate fantasy of clean slates. At how seriously I'd been taking my own story. I wasn't the same person I was five minutes ago.

Five minutes ago, I was drowning in shame. Right now, I was laughing. I had a good laugh at myself, then went back to my computer and kept googling.

That was it.

The feeling didn't last. Life went on. I went back to my usual patterns.

A day later, something happened - I don't even remember what - and my mind started its familiar script: “You're going to screw this up. You always do. That's who you are.”

But then another voice came: You are under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.

Surprisingly... I listened to this voice. I didn’t screw it up.

That moment made me think, “Oh. I can choose which voice to listen to! I can choose differently! Woww!”

I started pondering the quote, turning it over in my mind.

Then something clicked.

I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down who I was five minutes ago: Broken. Mess. Mistakes. Lies. People-pleasing. Not standing up for myself. So... am I not obligated to be the same? The quote said no.

And my mind went: “Wow... Here's the clean slate I’ve been looking for for years.”

I realised - Clean slate exists. But it’s not a cosmic do-over. It’s not outside. It’s not something someone else can give you. My fantasy was never a fantasy. I was just looking for it in the wrong place.

I felt this sudden relief - like I'd been carrying a backpack full of weights, a hundred tons, suffering under it for years. And I'd finally reached the place where I could set it down.

After that, whenever I felt heavy - whenever old regrets came flooding back, whenever my mind started the old story - I said the quote to myself and chose differently.

Whenever people around me said "you're the same," I said the quote in my head and kept moving forward.

Slowly, I started applying this in everyday moments.

Slowly, it became part of me.

And I realised what the quote had actually given me: permission.

Permission to not be me.

And that permission gave me back my life, my curiosity, my creativity.

It's been six years since I found that quote on a random summer afternoon.

I still go back to it.

Whenever I feel stuck - in a conversation, in a pattern, in an old story about myself - I hear myself say those words:

“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.”

This is one of the best things about being human: you can choose not to be "you."

Your identity is not a contract.

Your personality is not permanent.

Your beliefs are not set in stone.

They're just stories you've been telling yourself. And when you see them for what they are - narratives, not facts - you realise you can tell yourself a different story.

That's the freedom we have as humans. That's how we grow.

And that choice - that permission you give yourself - is the first step toward healing. Toward growth. Toward freedom.

That choice is always available. In every moment.

In this journey, I realised…

You don't need a clean slate from the universe.

You don't need anyone to forget what you did.

You don't need to erase the past.

When you feel stuck, suffocated, trapped in who you were - you just need to give yourself permission to change the story in your head and act like it.

You have that choice.

You always did.

And that's the most freeing thing I've ever learned.

You can choose not to be who you were 5 minutes ago. 

Much love!