choosing your life

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.