Future blindness

It's a funny thing writing a blog and having all these little thoughts and memories to look back on. Sometimes I cringe and other times I'm reminded of a time and place that is long buried in the back of my brain. For whatever reason, I've been quite nostalgic recently, maybe due to binging on Party of Five last week.

I recently re-read a post I wrote about the dangling carrot of life and how we're often focussed on looking ahead to reach a "goal".  While I still believe a lot of what I wrote in that post, there is a part that feels a little naive and I realise I've become a little more jaded as the years have gone by. In other ways, I'm also a little more optimistic.

As the great John Lennon wrote: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" and this is all too true. Recently, though, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how things may have been if I'd done things differently. Hindsight is always 20/20, especially if you learn some lessons about the mistakes that you make and the wrong turn that you take.

Whatever path you take or choices you make, life will continue to unfold. It's relentless like that. Well, relentless until it's not.

The thought that keeps popping up into my head over and over is while it's great to be in the now and appreciate where we are, I'm going to go against current wisdom of living in the moment and say that I think we sometimes need to think longer and harder about how what we do now can affect where we end up.

As I drove the kids home last night from soccer training, thinking about having to spend another two hours tonight at netball training, hat will I cook for dinner so the kids can be fed, bathed and in bed at a reasonable hour and that I may actually get a moment to chat with Skip so we're not passing ships in the night. Darbs pipes up: "I can't wait to be an adult and do whatever I want, whenever I want!" As the thought that I wasn't doing anything I really wanted to be doing sprung into my head, Goosey quickly replied: "It wouldn't be that good, cause you'd just be dirty and eat lollies all the time, then you'd end up with diabetes and you'd die."
"No I wouldn't!"
"Yes, you would!"
"NO I WOULDN'T"
"YES! YOU WOULD!"
"MUUUUUUUUUM!"

Ahhh yes, being an adult and being able to do whatever you want to do....

Later in the evening, I was talking to one of my kids and asking if they'd been mean to one of their friends that day. "Well, yes, but it was funny."
I had to drag out the whole, "when you do something think about if you'd like it done to you, if don't then don't do it" lesson.

It's that old lesson, that I hope and pray will go into their heads, but as I look around life as an adult I wonder if it does. Ever. So often I see people who just go on, head charged and do things, because they deserve it. They're entitled to it. It makes them happy now, don't worry about later. Who cares who is hurt or affected. The live in the moment, YOLO rules, are adapted for themselves.

So, yes, my thought is live in the now and appreciate what is around you, learn from the past, but don't forget that what you do will affect the road ahead. After 40 years of life, I've discovered this to be oh so true.