If onlys…

If only…

The trouble is if we live our lives by ‘if onlys’ then actually we don’t end up living our lives at all.

We end up living in the past and we become stuck, unable to move on. We somehow believe that if we go over it enough times we can change it. But of course we can’t.

If only I hadn’t of done this, if only I hadn’t of said that, if only I didn’t, if only I did!

But the problem is the past is set, it can’t be changed however many times you fantasise about it.

I know, it’s difficult to let it go isn’t it? It almost feels, in a strange way, as though we are giving up. But it is not giving up at all. It is accepting.

Accepting that we did the best we could at the time.

Accepting that we can’t always get it right and accepting that actually it doesn’t even matter anymore. Often we are not even the same person we were when ‘that thing’ happened.

I was chatting just the other day with somebody about this. I was saying how I would like to be me now but 25. The knowledge and the life I have now would allow me to enjoy being 25 (and I was in a pretty dark place at 25). She asked me, but would you have stayed on the same path? Made the same choices, done the same things? Well no, probably not because the woman I am at 50 has learnt some lessons, understands herself a little better, and is generally a little less bothered about what other people may (or may not) think. So I would have made different decisions and then I wouldn’t have had some of the pain I experienced and although I definitely would have handled parts of my life so much better those moments of pain were necessary to create the me I am.

And then I got to thinking how I also wouldn’t have had the same joy in my life. My children for one. I wouldn’t have had the same fun, and I wouldn’t have had the life that have led me to this woman now, sitting here writing this. A woman who admittedly would sometimes like to have the more sprightly shell of a 25 year old.

You may remember the film Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. Even if we could go back, would our different choices have led to anything better?

We just don’t know.

So I am going to enjoy being me, who I am today in this body with the memories and with the experiences, good, bad, horrendous and spectacular.

Because actually the more I get to know me the more I’m realising I actually quite like me.