Don't "What-if" your life away.

Let’s face it, we all make mistakes. We turn left when we should have turned right. We stay too long when we just should have moved on or we just keep on talking when we just should have shut our mouths. Mistakes are made, consequences are paid and we kick ourselves later. As life goes on and the choices we have made reflect clearer in our hearts and minds, the “what if” game starts its constant replay in our minds. What if I would have chosen differently? What if I would have known what I know now? The sad reality is that even though looking back is 20/20, looking forward usually isn’t. No one knows what lies ahead and what wonder or disappointment the future holds. I spent so much of my own life ripping myself apart for what I could not control or change.  I was “what ifing” my own life away by focusing on changes that I could have made that may or may not have produced a different future. Instead of focusing on what was, I was obsessing over what I thought could have been.  When one spends all their time locked in the past they miss out on the beauty that is the present.  It took me a long time to really understand this and as a person who has always struggled with patience, it was a hard lesson to learn. It was only when I watched my mother, whom I loved so very deeply, fight so hard to beat cancer that I started to gain perspective. Life is fragile. Life is sweet and life won’t wait while you figure out what you should have done. As much as she fought, as much as we fought for her and as much as we ached for her, all the “what ifs” in the world will never bring her back. We did everything we could with the knowledge that we had at the time and the outcome will never be any different. What is done is done and even with as cliché as that sounds, the truth of those words still resonate deep within me. I have learned to be patient, to take a deep breath and to rest in the peace that at the end of the day, everything is going to be alright. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but I do know that what will be, will be.  Hope, pray and have faith that the path you have already walked down will lead you to exactly where you are supposed to be, but don’t “what if” your life away.