“What if you saw your life from beginning to end, would you change anything?”~ The movie Arrival
Besides placing my little baby self with the perfect set of parents, on the beach, in Malibu, while being fed organic, gluten-free, free-range apple sauce by a giant silver spoon…
…I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But if I’m being truthful here, which I always try to be, I’m sure I’d take out my pair of big, sharp scissors and edit out all the painful parts.
The places where I didn’t get the part. Or the job. Or the boy I wanted more than a dish of really melty chocolate ice cream.
Where I was embarrassed. Sad. Ruefully disappointed. Or ashamed of myself. Yeah, I’d cut out those parts too, because, hey, nobody would miss them—least of all me.
And lets not forget the times where my heart got broken.
Where my chest hurt so much it felt like I’d recently had open heart surgery. Only to figure out later that the pain came from the exact opposite—the force of the slam. You can all relate to the force of the slam, right? Where you’re sailing along, all open-hearted (la, la, la, la, la), and somebody you love, respect and admire betrays you?
Or somebody dies.
First you hear the creaking of the hinges, because, hey, your heart is flung WIDE OPEN. This closing up tight thing will take a minute.
Then comes the slam. SLAM!! It batons down all of your hatches, locks every single rusty lock (and there are a shit-ton of locks, more locks than your average Manhattan walk up)…and installs a moat.
NOBODY is getting in there anytime soon. Am I right?
So, yeah, I’d say it would probably be in my best interest and the interest of love in general if I just cut out all of that messy shit —and pretend like it never happened.
But we all know we aren’t able to alter those things. I’m thinking of starting a “Go Fund Me” page to get that changed. Who’s with me?
Think about it though. Would you wipe out all of the people you’ve loved and lost? Just delete them from your script?
That would change so much. I don’t know if I’d be willing to do that. Because in hindsight each situation had an effect on another, kinda like the butterfly effect. In other words, it would fuck everything up.
Things we can”t even imagine. Things out of our purview.Things that are above our pay grade to even comprehend.
Didn’t not getting some of those things make you better? Stronger? Savvier? Funnier? And smarter?
Yeah… me neither.
In all seriousness. All of those things that felt like big, fat, obvious mistakes were like rocks in a stream, each one causing the path of the water to shift, which may have held us under, choking and spitting and gasping for air…until something (the fickle finger of fate?) grabbed us by our wet bathing suits, gave us a wedgie and led us to where we stand right. this. minute.
If I saw that in a life overview I’d probably laugh my ass off. Wouldn’t you?
And I probably wouldn’t change one goddamn thing. Would you?
Carry on,
xox
