Choose Your Own Adventure

Sometimes I look back on my life, and wonder if I made the right choices. Did I follow the right path? Did I choose the right forks in the road? Should I not have gone to university? Should I have started working right away instead of spending countless dollars for two pieces of paper? Was getting married the right choice? What about having a baby? Or having the second baby? Or staying home with the children? I must admit that I am lucky that I got to make these choices. I know there are many out there that don't get to do so. Still, I often wonder when I see my friends down completely different paths than I. Paths that don't include me as much as sometimes I wish they did. Should I be on those paths with them? I can't be the only one who does this. It's not regret, so much as wondering where I would be in the alternate world that I followed those other paths. But, I'll never know. Unlike the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I used to read as a kid, I cannot go back and explore the other choices if I don't like the outcome. I have to live with the choices I've made. That doesn't stop the wondering and the "what if's."
 
But then, I look down at the nursing and sleeping face snuggled against my body, and I know. No matter where I would be if I made different choices, I wouldn't be happier. It wouldn't be easier; it would be different. And that different might not include the constant messy house, or toddler tantrums, or sleepless nights. But it also probably wouldn't include baby snuggles and toddler laughs. It wouldn't include the husband who knows just when I need to laugh or when I need him to just sit quietly beside me. It wouldn't include family tickle-fests or family dinners or cuddling up together with all of my boys to watch Star Wars yet again. No, I don't think I'd be happier if I had chosen a different path. No matter what that other path might have led to. And though I am not even half-way done my real life "Choose Your Own Adventure," no matter where this path leads, I already know that this story has a happy ending. 


Comments

Anonymous said…
Looking back at some of the choices I've made in life, if I asked myself right now "did I make the right choice about this or about that" my initial answer would be NO. But on closer inspection, I did. The choices I made then were the right choices for me, then. They may not have been the smartest, the most fore-seeing, the most creative, the most sacrificing. But they were right, for me, at the moment. Life would be different with different choices, but different choices would have required me to be a different person. There are some choices I deeply regret, but I have faith that I've always made the moral choice when it mattered, and I've always done my best to do good and not do harm.
January 25, 2013 at 9:52 AM
mmeblueberry said…
I agree! I wish I could 'like' your comment! Those choices I made looking back may not have been the "right" choices in that they were the smartest or whatnot. But I do not regret them. As much as some of those choices led me to pain or to hard lessons, they also led me to the person I am. Without them, I wouldn't be the woman I am. The choices that looking back may seem like the wrong choice now taught me life lessons and helped me to be the person I am.
January 25, 2013 at 10:07 AM
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