choosing your life

Isn't it a bit of each with something else we don't understand (luck, blessings, just life)thrown in?.

We have to be responsible for the decisions we make but other things happen to us or to affect our lives that we have no say in at all.

Most of my life now is defininitely not of my choosing.Of course I could walk out on it and live one of choice but that is never going to happen.

I always try to remember 'It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it'.
Usually there is a choice about how you react to things.

I was intending to say something along the lines of jane's post. I once heard someone put it like this: I'ts not the hand life deals that counts, it is the way you play it.

Ann (((hugs)))

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans (or somesuch) somebody said.

I don't see how one could totally choose the life one leads as things happen that would, probably, never be part of anyone's life plan. I know they have in my life. As Jane says, it your reaction to what happens that is a choice.

ann I didn't see your post before I posted mine.
I know you're having a really hard time, and I'm sorry. I hope you have some moments of happiness to lighten the darkness.

Kitty I have found those words very relevant at various stages in my life, so much so that I have them framed on a wall in my home. They are attributed to John Lennon and so, sadly, it seems that "Death is what happens when you're busy making plans" could be added.

I have often felt, it would have been helpful to have lived my life backwards!

Life's experiences colour our opinions of past choices. x

It would be hard to say what you choose and what chooses you. You make decisions based on what you know or feel is right at that time but hindsight gives you a view you didn't have then. If you could remove one bad decision the whole of your future might change but who knows if it would be better or worse? (Wow this is deep!)
I do feel that "youth is wasted on the young".

J52 as my mother used to remark often 'If I knew then what I know now'

I do sometimes wonder what life would be like if I had made different choices, but I did choose to take a certain path and not another on more than one occasion.
However, once with a partner life leads you in directions which may not always be of your own choosing. It is often a compromise.

How can we choose our life. We didn't choose where to be born but we lucky to be born in Europe and not in the Middle East at the moment.
I think I was just plain lucky. I'm grateful for it, pleased that it turned out like it did. It is dangerous to go down that road of people choosing a life. It would mean that we need not show empathy or have sympathy with those less fortunate than ourselves.

I passed the 11 plus to mention another thread, I didn't choose to pass it I did nothing to prepare for it(we didn't in those days) but it gave my life a direction wich I was too immature to have chosen for myself.
Make the most of it, as old people weare nearing the end anyway.

A well worn (but true) cliche about how you react to what life throws at you is to compare it to cards -it's not the hand you are dealt but how you play it. True, if we had been born under a draconian Muslim regime such as that in Saudi, or as oppressed women in Nigeria or other parts of West Africa there's not much you can do with what you have been dealt except survive, but for those of us lucky to be born free and healthy with the benefits of education, life is going to be what we can make of it.

My life would be ok if it weren't for all the bloody washing.

I certainly cannot remember choosing to be a widow at 62.

I know what you mean, jingl, having just spilt coffee all over my duvet this morning.

There is no right or wrong choice. If I had made different choices, I wouldn't have the family I have now, and they make me very happy.

kitty and janea thank you for kind thoughts. I cope just fine.

I am sorry that life is not as you might wish just now annsixty and hope that it improves for you.

There is plenty in my life over the years that I might wish had been different; and some choices that I regret. But on thew whole I count myself lucky.

annsixty

No, we have to make the best choices we can with what life throws at us - often unexpectedly.

I'm sure my life has just happened. I can't think of many instances where I have deliberately chosen between different directions. Most things were just the obvious route or what I was dealt at the time. I am however generally happy with the cards I was dealt and the way they played out, I can't think of anything that I would have changed.

I think the only big choice I made was to do medicine rather than law! I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen the other way?
Everything else just seems to have followed on from that choice at age 16

My sixteen year old grandaughter wants to go into medicine. Her younger sister wants to go into law.

I wish I'd had that sort of confidence as a teenager. I hadn't got a clue what I wanted to do at that age.

I often wonder where I would be if I had stamped my feet and chosen nursing against my parents advice and gone into office work,everything evolved from there really the circle of friends I kept over the years,meeting Mr Right at the right time,children etc all just dropped into place and now very settled and happy with my life.

In childhood we probably don't have choices and so have to live the life we are given, be it in a happy home, unhappy, in care or with questions regarding adoption, desertion or abandonment.

In adulthood we get to choose what we want to do in life, and so we begin to live the life we choose. Within those choices are times when we do just live our lives, when we are wanting things to be different or put up with how things are as some have no choice but to stay. Others choose to leave and start again. The same with jobs or areas of living. Uprooting and starting again is a choice, not something that just happens, plans have to be made and decisions have to be taken, that does not happen by just living your life.

I wouldn't have wanted to have just lived my life. I wouldn't have wanted to be in the same position now as what I was 15 years ago with a husband who abused me. So I made a choice and I have no regrets. Life, like the world has to evolve.

My ex next door neighbour was having an affair with a married man and had been for over 20 years. He was not going to leave his wife for her. She complained over and again how her life was crap but did nothing to change. In another 20 years she will still be saying the same thing. That is just living life. She will die a mistress to a man who did not love her. She does the same thing over and over again and expects him to leave his wife. He is not going to. He has told her many times.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the outcome to be different. - Albert Einstein.

This quote has changed my life.