If by magic or cosmic grant you were allowed to change one thing about your past, what would it be? 

The question above came across my field of view over the weekend and I have been pondering it now for about 24 hours.  What my time of deliberating that question brought is a fairly long list I have at least some desire to have been different.  That is a bit of a shocker as I feel there is mostly peace today about life lived behind me.  Maybe it is possible to have some desire for a past with differences, yet be at peace with the way things are.  That thought feels true so I don’t believe my equilibrium within will be disturbed by making a wish list of what has danced through my head.  So away my mind went spinning considering the question. 

I began wishing things for other people like the thought that my brother would not have had a farm accident at 16 that damaged his left hand.  Then I realized that was more about ‘his’ past than mine and such reflection was not being true to the intent of the question.  I had to get more directly personal. 

As my thinking began to drift more directly to my own history, first in thought was the pain and heartache concerning my two marriages.  At first I explored the question by pondering would my one wish be to never have known one of them.  “No” came a quick answer as I could not imagine either woman not having been a part of my life.  What the resulting thoughts echoed back to me was a wish “to have been a better husband” to both of them.  

In exploring further the confines of thought about my past, I moved on to my son.  There I found the wish for living in the same household for his years of high school and not being separated when he was 16.  That premise settled into wishing simply to have “been a better father” in all respects.    

As the little storm of thought proceeded, I began to move to a broader perspective and think about all women who have been a part of my life.  At that point there were a number of instances where I wished to not have caused the amount of pain I did.  However, I could not settle on one person and situation that I would wish to change more than another one.  My conclusion about this direction of inspection of my life was a wish “to have been a better friend and lover”.  

Expanding my realm of thought about the question “what would I change about my past” I moved into my work life.  Pondering the many years in my profession I began to think of those whose lives was changed negatively by the decisions I made.  While my belief is strong I usually make good choices, I know well I am not 100%.  My wish became “to have been a wiser boss”.  

The mind is a curious contraption.  It is almost impossible to keep the brain headed into any one direction of deliberation.  The more time the question kicked around in my head, the greater the bounces varied in my thoughts.  I found myself wondering how I might have been different in a one single way that could have made me better at everything I had put on my list so far.  It was from that nugget of brain waves the consideration began about how I might have been shaped differently over all.  I settled on the wish that one or both of my parents could have been less dysfunctional so I could have been raised to have been less so myself.  

I suppose it is not uncommon to settle on what one thinks is the best answer to a question and be quite satisfied to have found a near perfect solution.  Then after further contemplation realize the resolution arrived at is flawed.  If my parents had been different, more together, mature and in control it is likely I would be so different making recognition of myself today almost impossible. 

On one hand that seems like a good idea, but on another I don’t like it at all.  When boiled down, I don’t want to be anyone but who I am.  If the bad parts of my life were cleansed away, I would be a far different person.  Certainly in some ways I’d have lived in a way that brought less pain into the world to me and others, yet without the lessons learned I could not be “me”.    All in all I like me.  Today I am happy and contented with myself (mostly anyway) and am grateful to be who I am.  I can’t imagine changing and becoming a stranger to myself.

To be nobody but yourself in a world doing its best to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human can ever fight and never stop fighting.  E. E. Commings