Do Overs

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Have you ever reached a point in your life when you look back and wish you could change one, two, three things, rectify mistakes, reverse decisions, taken a different career path, or.... maybe just whisper something into your younger self's ear, a warning perhaps?

What would you do if you had the ability to do just that, to whisper one sentence in your younger self's ear, knowing that what you said would be absolutely believed. Would you do it?

Would you really do it, would you change that one thing?

Would you go back in time and change something that could, no, WOULD change everything that happened afterwards? Perhaps leading you into a completely different life, different path, career, home...

Not everyone feels that they have made really terrible mistakes along the road of this life, but most people, I think, have one or two things they would have done differently if they "knew then what they know now".

In the deepest, darkest corners of my own mind, when I look back on nearly 53 years of living, I see a whole slew of mistakes, really bad choices, times when I was too fearful to do something I should have done, or was too arrogant to look at both sides, or said the wrong thing and hurt someone, or went along with something I knew I shouldn’t have just because it was easier, or I believed in the absolute wrong person… My life is rife with these errors in judgment, some big, some small, some huge, some too embarrassing to even recall without cringing.

So if I had ONE do over, one chance to warn myself, would I take that chance, even though it might change everything?

Yeah, I think I would.

I would warn myself about getting involved with a particular person who ended up stealing four years of my life and hurting me on so many levels, including my relationship with my own children. I still think back on the entire episode in my life with real bitterness, even after nearly fifteen years.

My own scars I maybe could have lived with, but what it did to my relationship with my own wonderful, marvelous kids is just... awful. My children, who I carried, bore and raised, loved more than my own life then and now, one selfish and stupid mistake in character judgment changed everything.

We have managed to get through it and now I am close - in as many different ways as they are different from each other - to all three of my now grown children, but there was heartache that did not need to happen, tears that did not need to be shed, confidence that did not need to be shattered, pain that I did not have to put them – or, let's be honest here, myself – through.

Yeah, I would do it.

How about you?



Just Musing,
Susan



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