It isn't that day anymore

So how do you explain something to someone who has no real frame of reference for what you are saying without it sounding like an excuse or pathetic. I know there are things I don’t really get but I do try to be empathic about where others are in their lives. We are free to choose but our choices are limited sometimes by others or by circumstances where we find our lives.

So today I was asked “Why don’t you do this or that?”

I gave lots of reasons why, but really it‘s only one. Mainly I choose to try to be a good parent and be there for my kids and I still choose them over things for myself. Do I regret this, no I don’t regret this choice.

Has it changed my life? Yes it has and mostly I think in a good way. I don’t exactly how it has changed my life but it has. I know I have memories of my children doing things with me and me being there for them and their having more opportunity because of my choice. Now I see them making choices that I would make and choices I wouldn’t make. Doesn’t make me a failure as a parent when they go a different way. I also know that I tried to empower them. I also know I’m not the only one teaching them. Could I have chosen not to be there for them. I certainly could have chosen that path. Where would that road have taken things?

I can only speculate. Would things be any different? Perhaps, they would be maybe they would be exactly where they are now but for different reasons. At least then I could look to myself and know that I made things this way.

Still it’s a choice that has an impact far more reaching than this day and those gone by.

Would I want things differently, certainly. However other people make choices too. Their choices have impacts, either in the reality of someone’s life in that moment of then and there or in the choices of others and our own choices either create or limit opportunity/choices for others.

The choices I made were impacted by the choices of others in my past, and in my present.
While my choices were limiting to my activities they created opportunity for others. My hope is that making the choices today will open more opportunity later. I don’t have a crystal ball, I won’t read my own cards because the crone said it was bad luck to do that, and my dreams only show me pain which is likely to occur or is occurring. So right now I’m creating opportunity for them because I want to do this. Not because I have to, you don’t have to do anything but die. I wouldn’t have the job I have today if people had to make this choice. So I choose.

I justify with other reasons too which are more choices, being shy AKA not being overly confident, being burned by others a few too many times, taken advantage of by others, used, and lots of other unpleasant things. Lack of money which everyone seems to have a bit too much of the lacking today. Yet lots of people want more money for less goods/service than yesterday. Which makes the lack even worse.

You choose it though. Yes I choose. Why don’t you do this it doesn’t cost that much or something else. Well I choose not to have the debt for that because I would like to be able to pay my heating bill. I turn the heat down so I can pay to do something fun a few times a year. Choices or excuses. If you can’t be empathetic they are excuses if you can the are choices.

Maybe I’ve made the wrong choices and I’ve gotten it all wrong. Perhaps when I was six if I had just looked at the cars instead to the trees, it would have all been different.


Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,