Midwestman

I've been thinking lately about the moment I met my AW. I was in my early twenties and went out for a drink with a friend to a neighborhood pub. We were just hanging out for a couple hours when two beautiful girls sit down at the table next to ours. My friend starts talking to the one girl and the other girl and I instantly connected. We talked for hours and I took her phone number and from that moment on we were inseparable. It's so hard to believe from those beginnings how our life turned out. I often think how I almost didn't go out that night. I almost went to a different bar. I almost sat at a different table. I almost worked late. I almost left a few minutes before they walked in. If not for that moment in time I wonder how different life would have been?

brokenheartfool

You've learned and grown from what you've experienced in your life.
What if's...where do they lead? What do they give you? Any moment of anyday could have been different...but think if you had taken that road during that time that some horrible accident had occurred and had died in it...see?
I see no point in regrets in my life. Not to say I wouldn't like to have done some things better.
It is what it is, and I can make today better, and strive to daily.
Maybe a different path, a different life, and it would be YOU that you don't like these days. Maybe you would have turned out different--more selfish, for example. Whew! ARen't you glad you took the path you did?

TakingCharge999

Midwestman, I have learned it has been me. I have gone out with the same selfish person in different bodies. Perhaps you would have met someone else, but with the same destructive patterns. We will never know... we can only work with who we are and what we know and what we have, today.. now... living in the past or in the future is insanity, I have lived in the past for the last 25 years. It has left me nothing good and a lot of bitterness. Life happens now! Also I agree with the post above, doing gratitude lists is a great exercise....

Phoenixthebird

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling