The Change in Perspective

Hello, my angel faces. So, today I want to talk about perspective. Before I can do that, I need to share something about myself. Perhaps you do this as well.

I often catch myself reminiscing about the past. I had a pretty solid childhood and, for the most part, a great school experience (up until college, ha ha). However, I don’t just idly relive moments from the past. I think to myself, “how could I have done this better, how could I have done that better? What if I had made this choice instead? What if I hadn’t been so scared? What if I had lived this day to the fullest in every sense of the word? What if I had said yes? What if I knew then what I knew now?”

I know this is silly. The past is the past, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Wondering if I could have done something differently—or if I should have—does nothing to help what happened then or what happens now. When I was little, my mother had a coffee cup upon which was painted a very useful quote: “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles; it empties today of its strength.” It’s not that I’m worrying about the past, exactly; it’s just that I wonder about how different it could have been.

I have constructed huge, elaborate fantasies about how my past could have been. At least five nights out of the week, before I fall asleep, I close my eyes and enter these fantastic re-imagined versions of my life in which I am a hero, an inspiration, a savior, a role model, an incredible and admired person. In these alternate time lines, I never said no to something because I was scared. I made friends left and right because I wasn’t shy and awkward. I spent my time wisely and learned strange, awesome things and saved lives and made a difference.

Of course, eventually something snaps me back to the “real” world, and I look around, and I think, “well, none of that happened, did it?” I sigh and try to think of something else, but the allure of the worlds I have built is often too enticing to resist. As a result, there are entire histories floating around inside my head.

Recently, I made what seems to be a rather important realization.

Several years from now, I don’t want to be looking back upon this time in my life, re-imagining it. I don’t want to fall asleep fantasizing about what could have been. So what is the answer to this conundrum?

Well, it seems pretty simple to me: I must live life so that I do not ever catch myself wishing it were different. I must live life in such a way that, in the future, I think “I did exactly what I should have done and I am immensely pleased with it.”

Of course, by the time I actually get to the future, my perspective may have changed yet again. Maybe, the choice that seems best and most fulfilling now will seem poor later.

Well, I will just have to climb that beanstalk when I reach it.

Share your thoughts with me in the comment section. Talk to you soon.