for a friend

We make choices that are right for the time and for the knowledge we had at the time.

Oh maybe something didn't end up as we thought it should, or we can see a different choice could have led us to a more desirable outcome, but we can only ever see that with the benefit of hindsight. Every choice we make leads to greater knowledge-and how can something that teaches us be 'wrong'? And it's only with the greater knowledge afforded to us by this so-called 'wrong choice' that we can look back and say it was a wrong choice.

So the choices we've made in the past are rarely errors of judgement. They were considered decicions based on what we knew then. It's only after we experience the consequences of our choices do we learn enough to think there could have been a 'better' way-but we think that with the knowledge gained from that experience and those consequences.


Me, circa January, 2005, and because I'm a profound and prolific biznitch, I'm quoting myself.

So heartbreakingly often, we look back on our pasts with regret, and we wonder how we can ever forgive ourselves for who we were and what we did. Forgiveness however, suggests a wrongdoing-and that's where I get squicked.

Hindsight gives us the view of yesterday from where we are today, and our experience gives us the wisdom. We have that wisdom because of our past.

Without one, there would not be the other.

We look back with the judgment afforded to us by experience. Why then, do look back and judge ourselves?

Better I think, to accept our past. Maybe we would do different now, but we did our best then too.

So friend, I remind you to be proud of who you were and who you are, and who you've yet to be.

Lather, rinse, repeat.