4 Aug 2018 Have I Learned From My Choices?

Have I Learned From My Choices? 

I have made many questionable choices in my life.  I have repeated them several times.  I can now say I am a whole lot better in not repeating stuff.  With hindsight it is very easy to label things as mistakes. There are choices that were truly mistakes.  But they are also lessons.  With all the knowledge, experience and advice out there you would think I wouldn’t make mistakes I did and even repeat them.  Well, that was not the case.  I was great at ignoring “conventional wisdom” and doing as I pleased, consequences be dammed.   Funny how life has a way to remind you why conventional wisdom exists.  

Were most of my choices wrong?  Again, from a distance I can say yes.  I don’t agonize over them, though one does still hurt.  You might say at my age it is about time I make better choices. That is fair.  The vast majority of my choices did not just impact me but others.  It would be easy if they only did.  

Just about all the choices I made that had negative consequences were done on spur of the moment.  If I had a waited a day or even an hour, my life would have been very different.  It is those crossroads you can look back on your life.  You know what happened when you chose one way, you can only conjecture what would have happened if you chose differently.  Life would have been different had I gone the other way, but who knows if it would have been better.   

I believe in the saying that if you died with no regrets than you didn’t live life. Yes, I have regrets.  They are part of who I am.  I don’t spend my days looking back.  However, I do reference decisions I made before to ones I have to make now.  That is learning.  That is where I am today.