Feeding My Ignorance

There is no doubt that if this blog goes the same way as the one that I have previously published privately then a significant number of the posts will result from the discovery of a really apt quote or article that resonates with my own views.  This post is one such and is inspired by words from Viktor Frankl.

...

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.

I only found these words a few days ago and was really impressed.  It is taken from his book Man's Search for Meaning.

As I look back over my own life I can see the wisdom in what he has written - the realities (good and bad) are all part of what has made me the person I am.  It would be, in some cases, easy to say "I wish I could go back and make that decision again knowing what I know now" but... and it is a big but.... I know what the result of the original decision has been - I have no idea of the eventual outcome if I changed that decision and it could as easily work out to be worse rather than better.

Someone - and at this moment in time I can't remember who - said words along the lines of "everyone when making a decision chooses the right course of action available to them on the basis of what they know at that moment and how they perceive the results".  That, of course, does not say that everyone makes good decisions because they may be based on inaccurate knowledge, or a skewed view of the world, or a misconception about the outcome - and there will always be unintended consequences.

So, I am comfortable that even when the decisions were difficult my choices were 'correct' within the assumptions and worldview that I had.  Faced with the same decision now (rather than going back to the original time) I may well make a different choice, but that still does not make the orginal one wrong!

I can see that there have been many times in my life when decisions have been made where there was very little reason to go one way rather than another - just a little thing would have swayed my judgement and the outcome would have been different.  That includes some pretty major decisions as well - where the whole course of my life could have changed.

There is no point in thinking "if only..." because the if only would almost certainly have led to those unintended consequences - or at least to different ones - there have been plenty of unintended consequences of my decisions over the years!!

So, thank you Viktor Frankl for giving me a really good way to view my life history and the rich and wonderful experiences I have had.