No, I am not feeling particularly sad or nostalgic now. This popped up in my feed and it struck me for some reason.
I do not know that I have a life I would have hoped for, honestly because I am not sure that I know that that life would have been. I have written before about a series of lives that I thought I would have had but for various and sundry reasons never really materialized as one might have hoped for. Possibly that was because I never really wanted them, possibly because as time goes on we learn to let go of things more easily and with less grieving.
My life is good. I scarcely have a thing to truly complain about, and anything that I do have to complain over would largely fall into the category of "First World Problems". If my career choice is not what thrills me (honestly probably my biggest complaint), at least it has kept us fed and housed well all these years and truly, I have always been able to find another job.
Do I have mistakes that I grieve? Of course. A lot of them involve people and my relationships with them, some of them involve things that meant that life took a very different turn indeed. I certainly try to make less of them now, but I still stumble.
Still - like the Piper quote above - the frog struck me as well. Only those who never make anything never make a mistake. Comforting to realize that without the mistakes, the rest never happens either.
I find a quiet comfort in these thoughts as I sit writing this on the first day post Daylight Savings time, when the sun is clearly not where it should be but shining brightly on the red and golden leaves and naked branches of Autumn. I can become troubled about the world at times, but these sorts of things remind me that these, too, are in God's control. I need only be attentive to His hand to see them.
If mistakes aren't made then somebody isn't trying. Of course some folk are REALLY trying.....if you get what I'm saying. As for the time change, let's settle on ONE time....year 'round, enough of shifting ahead and back twice in a year TB.
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - Well, there all those that really do seem to go out of their way to make mistakes, but generally speaking it is a sign of effort.
DeleteTime change. Literally the one thing everyone thinks is a bad idea but we cannot even get that done politically. I am of a mind at this point that it will have to be done by the states, as Arizona has done.
I proudly own up to most of my mistakes for they have made me better as a result. At least with the big things, I've always thought that the path I am now on as a result of my choices and even mistakes, was the best path I could have been on.
ReplyDeleteEd, I have the mistakes of effort, which I am usually not ashamed of, and the mistakes of judgement, which I am sometimes ashamed of. The mistakes of judgement can be harder to come back from.
DeleteTB,
ReplyDeleteYour first three posts of November have really struck a chord with me.
I’ve been in pause and reflect mode for three days…
In an effort to be as succinct as possible, I’ll just say that I can clearly see that all roads and past choices lead to where I’m currently at…
Quite honestly, I don’t know that I would want to change those decisions, even if it were possible.
So, no real regrets. Each and every one of those decisions have been instrumental in exerting the effort (presently) to make more informed choices and decisions going forward.
For this ^, I am grateful.
Thank you for the thought provoking words.
Blessings to you.
B - Thank you very much for the kind words.
DeleteI think one of the things about looking back at our choices and our current life can be that we do not necessarily know what those other options would look like. We can theorize on them - oh, if I had only taken this job or married this person or studied this - but we will never really know how those would worked out, except they would not have worked out as we intended fully because things never do. And we ourselves would be different people.
Would I want to be a different person because of those different choices? Like you perhaps, I struggle to say yes. Because those decisions did bring me to the me of now, which - although very flawed in areas - in some ways who I really am.
If only, if only, if only… 😏
DeleteI’ve exhibited a lifelong tendency to learn things the hardest way possible.
By first learning what NOT to do, I can eventually learn to make kinder decisions.
Self condemnation comes much slower now when I’m honest with myself about the options I thought I had at that point.
Live and learn.
But as I’ve read- “Good is the enemy of better.”
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Some of us really are kind of f...ups! I just try to embrace it. Whatever...
ReplyDelete