Shoulda woulda coulda — I often get to Friday and think about the choices I could have made Wednesday and Thursday that would have left me more free to do what I want heading into the weekend. If I don’t have a “weekend,” it’s mostly my own doing because of procrastination during the week.
All choices lead to this moment, to this season in life. What different choices will I make this moment, this day, this season? And where will they lead?
Some choices are out of our hands, but for the most part this moment is a result of my choices.
Not long ago I finally finished a song that I started writing in 2007. For the longest time it had only two verses, then I thought of one line in 2020, composed a verse in 2021 and another verse in 2022, came up with the words for the middle 8 in early 2022 and the chords for it just after Christmas, and finally it all came together in a form I could call finished.
One of those original 2007 verses was:
A life is a series of choices,
Hard lessons and debts to be paid,
And I may regret some of those choices,
But these are the choices I’ve made.
I suppose that’s a lame way of saying, “It is what it is,” or more precisely “It is what I made it.” Not much use in wishing I made other choices, although I hate any choices that hurt someone else and I do wish I hadn’t. Despite all those cool time travel stories, however, you can’t change the past. The best you can do is from now on.
And some wonderful things happened as I rebounded from bad choices, things that otherwise may never have occurred. Life’s funny that way.
