I WOULDN'T CHANGE A THING

Last evening as I sat out in my garden reflecting on my life, an extraordinary thought popped into my head: If I had it all to do over, I wouldn’t change a thing. What?! After all the mistakes I have made, the hurts I have inflicted, the pain I have endured, the sorrows I have suffered, why would I not want to change any of that? The thought makes no logical sense. And yet, there it is, real and present and persistent. How can one explain such an irrational rumination?

Then another insight arose: All those experiences, whether good, bad, indifferent, remarkable, silly, smart, stupid, provocative, horrendous, marvelous, painful, joyful, or just plain satisfying, have made me who I am. So, I suppose one explanation is that I would not sacrifice my basic personality for one that might have been more perspicacious, more brilliant, or—and this is hard to admit—more caring. There is something odd, something absurd, about being so invested in the wholeness of who I am and the totality of the life I have led. And yet, again, there it is. Is this an overweening ego?

Perhaps it is not just a question of ego, but rather a sense of having lived out some kind of pre-ordained destiny. It is as if some seed within me knew just what kind of human being I would—or could—become. I do not know how that happened, but I do know that, raised on a farm in North Carolina, I somehow felt from an early age that my life would not be lived in that environment. I ended up in St. Louis, Missouri, married to a radical intellectual Jewish man—something about as far from my rural Southern Baptist roots as could be imagined.

How did that seed, which seems so alien to my background, get implanted? I have no idea, for it does not appear to have come from my parents, who were opposed to almost all my choices and my decisions. I had to leave my home so that kernel could germinate and grow into the person I have become. It has not always been an easy process—separating from my family at age eighteen was one of the early sacrifices. I see the arc of my life as a slow unfolding of my authentic personhood, and my behavior as an effort to nurture that often fragile, sometimes stunted, seedling self, a task that continues into my old age. I feel that I am still exploring and still learning from the course of my own maturation, with all its stops and starts, pains and pleasures. Just as a plant grows due to the nutrients in the soil, to water and available sunlight, so I have unfolded in response to all my life experiences and to all those who have been close to me.

I have the weird feeling that all along my future was pulling me forward, that there was some path already designated, or at least suggested, that I was destined to follow. If this seems to deny the feeling we all have of free will, then it occurs to me that perhaps I could have denied or ignored that pull, could have acquiesced to the wishes of my parents, could have remained within the confines of that life in North Carolina. But for some reason I did not. I shall be forever thankful that I chose otherwise, for my life has been richly satisfying.

So, at this late stage of my life, I have a deep sense of gratitude for whatever life force has guided me thus far. As I approach these final years of my life, I rejoice in the life I have lived.

I would not change a thing.