2003-06-17 - 7:38 a.m.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
Elsinora is seeing ghosts of what might have been. All of see ghosts like that from time to time. At Elsinora�s age, I paid more attention to them. I thought about what might have happened if I had been someplace earlier�or later. I thought about what might have happened if I had been a boy and not a girl. As I have gotten older, I have come to believe that our lives are so layered that knowing the effect of a single change is impossible.
Sure, I could think about what life would be like if I did not have multiple sclerosis. It might have fewer aches and pains�or simply different ones. I might never have met Mr. Philately. I met Mr. Philately in law school. I am not sure I would have gone to law school if I had not had multiple sclerosis. I still would have been laid off from teaching but I might simply have decided to take another job in special education. Without the multiple sclerosis, I would have had the option of looking for a more physically demanding special education position�and I might have found one. Without Mr. Philately or law school, I likely would not have had Kat and Day-Hay, I likely would not have come to Wisconsin, and I probably would not be on a school board. (Hey! Life might have been easier.) And on and on and on.
Some people spend a lot of time looking backward. Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds that I know do a lot of it. I remember doing it then too. Maybe figuring out how you got where you are is part of figuring out who you are. But I do not do much of it. For me, the question is not who I am or how I got here but where I go from here�and the past holds only limited clues.
While looking at the might-have-beens provides far less information sometimes than it would appear, it may provide one advantage. It may help you could your blessings. You may recognize when you have been far luckier than it seemed you would be at first and that is a blessing. I am in favor of recognizing blessing, especially of teenagers recognizing their blessings. Sometimes my daily contact with teens leads me to believe that they are wired to lose track of their blessings too easily.
But it also has a darker side. You can dwell on decisions made that you think you would make differently today. �How did I get here?� can be a quagmire that prevents you from asking the real question, �Where do I go from here?� I have seen too many forty and fifty year old women who still are blaming things their mothers did for the faults they themselves perpetuate to believe that looking backwards is a generally good thing.
So, turn your head, look back, and your blessings. Just don�t stay there too long. Your head may get stuck in that position.
LAST YEAR: Pantyhose
TWO YEARS AGO: in Washington, D.C.�no entry
IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
Evil Canadians
The Small Stuff
The Dump
Dreaming of Recall
Real Men
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
