If Only

I'm not feeling very well tonight so I am going to post what has been swirling around in my head the last few days. I have had a lot of retrospective thoughts. I guess that's normal. I've just been kinda depressed lately and I'm not really sure why. I don't know if it's because I have been so tired or because if I'm battle scared and war weary. Maybe it's because I am getting ready to start another round of treatment once I find out if the docs want to do another round of outpatiet external radiation or if they are going to try the inpatient 5 day internal round. I'm not sure why I have been bummed I just am. I am tired of being tired! Having to care for an aging parent who's needs seem to increase monthly, daily at times does not lessen the level of exhaustion. Ah well, whatever, I'm fine. It does kind of explain my posting tonight. So, let the blog commence....

How many times in our lives do we look back at things and think of all the if onlys? If only I had been stronger. If only I would have been smarter. If only I had been or done this or that. I am guilty, as I tend to think about these things from time to time. OK OK I do it more than from time to time. I do it all the time. Not only do I think about it, I apply it. I believe it. I take all of those if onlys into my psyche and apply them to my life and different events. It’s easier to blame one’s self that try to surrender to the thought that someone else holds the guilt. To affix culpability to someone else and expect him or her to accept it is beyond comprehension. For some to garner an understanding someone needs to take that responsibility. It’s easier to forgive others before one’s self even if others think that person in that instance has nothing to forgive themselves for. I am not saying that this is something that all will understand but it is a mindset many subscribe to.

I don’t know why I thought about this right now. Oh well. I guess my point is if for every if only we may hold in our mind we could also ask the proverbial what if as well. However, that too is an open-ended question. Both are questions that do not have any solid answers for. Yet for many they will search their entire lives for the answers.

So the real question becomes how much energy and time will one devote in the search during their lifetime. This also leads to another question. What if one had been stronger, smarter, faster etc., how would that have altered everything that would come after? I have been asked in the past if I could change anything or event in my life would I? Sounds like a what if type of question to me.I have always answered no because the entire compilation of events has shaped me into who I am today. My values, the social justice fights I choose, my compassion, and everything else. Included I suppose it would be accurate to say that because of some of these things they have made me bitter to certain things, hardened me to other things, more alert or a hypersensitivity to thing. With the good comes the bad.

Therefore, it is a matter of choice what to take with you as time goes by. Yes, good and evil go hand in hand and has from the point of creation but we still have opportunities along our way in life to make a decision what we want to carry with us. If we do leave something behind, or as a modern society would say dealt with and moved on that space would need to be filled with something. Something would inevitably replace it. I think that anything we carry with us can be a weight. We always hear that carrying negative things or baggage with us all the time causes us to be weighed down and heavy. The analogy that negative baggage weighs us down. Yet, no one talks about how even the good baggage can be weighty. Thus wouldn’t everything we experience and have imprints of either physically, emotionally, mentally or otherwise, good bad and indifferent have weight? Don’t all things we encounter provide us with a gage on how we handle similar situations in the future?

For example, I do not like to have my back to a door especially in public. Even my bed faces the door in the basement. The interior door that leads to the playroom, work area and laundry room is directly to my left and visible via peripheral vision. The door to the freezer room and bathroom is to my right and also in my peripheral vision. I know why I position myself the way I do it’s not important to go into it here. Is it a weight or just simple self-preservation? Or is it a lasting reaction to past events? If it’s the later, couldn’t it also be a good thing? No one can sneak up on me, and I always see what is coming my way.

So here is a question for you to answer. It would be interesting to see what those of you who read my blog think. Question: Are all experiences good and bad, anything that creates a memory of any kind, is it a weight you carry with you in all you do now or are just the bad things the weights? Can the good things or memories become weighty after time as well? Do the good things create a sort of expectation that everything similar to that must live up to? What do you think? Would you change anything in your lifes history? If so would you do so even knowing that it may alter who you are today or even physical cirrcumstances? What if the one thing you would change would alter history just enough that you would never meet your spouse or even have the children you do? Would you still do it even if everything you love now would be either shared with someone else or you may not have at all? Would you still change even the smallest of things?

OK that is my rabbit trail from my way to cerebral at times brain. If only I didn’t think so much or so hard. On the other hand what if I didn’t? What characteristic would replace that trait? Sorry, I just had to add that.