three quesitons for today
I have a couple of decks of cards that have writing prompts. One is called Tales: Life story edition and the other one is called The Shadow Work Card Game. Each of them have cards that you pull with questions/prompts/conversation starters. I pulled some from both today and this is what I came up with:
- What’s something you wish you could go back and undo?
- Imagine you are on your deathbed. While laying in bed, your parents walk in. What are the lat things you say to them?
- What traits do you see in others that you wish you had more of?
Going back in time and doing something different is one of those tricky questions because if you did or didn’t do a thing it would have changed everything. It’s like a time travel movie. If I hadn’t married my (first, second, third, fourth) wife, all kinds of things would have been altered. Maybe I never left Michigan, maybe I never ended up working for the military in North Carolina, which means i never would have ended up in Colorado, or there are whole rafts of friends I would never have met. If I moved to Colorado when I was 18 (as I considered) I likely would have ended up in a completely different career.
One that sticks with me is when I was 17, I lived outside of Detroit. I had bought a build it yourself synthesizer kit that required me to solder components to a board. I never got it working, in part because I was too proud or too angry to ask my father, an electrical engineer who built our first color TV on the kitchen table, to help me. The synth never got built, I didn’t become someone who did synthesizers and so when electronic dance music became a big thing in Detroit, I wasn’t there for it. Of course that would have led to an entirely different life which could have ended lots of ways - death by drugs, local or wider fame… who knows.
If I hadn’t married early-ish like I did, i would have had a whole different set of experiences in my 20s. My father-in-law wouldn’t have helped me get a connection to a job that led to basically everything else I did in my IT career. I might have still have ended up working in that field, but I would have taken a whole different path. Instead of being a sysadmin, I might have been a regular programmer and that would have led to any number of different outcomes.
Any one of my marriages.. what if I didnt have my head so far up my ass and stayed with the marriage? Infinite different possibilities.
If I’d have finished the 4 year degree, maybe I’d have gone on to more, or I would have been more in some kind of managerial track instead of the hands on/technical track I did. I might have more money, but it’s also a possibility I might have ended up more conservative than I am.
So the deathbed thing… If my parents showed up in the room it would be shocking as all get out since they are already gone. I might take that as a sign that I am nearly gone myself since allegedly that kind of thing happens when you are close to death. That it was them showing up would be something, since I wasn’t terribly close with them from high school on, so them coming back at the end…
But there they are, I’m supposed to say something. I’d tell them that they did a decent job in raising me, some difficulties notwithstanding. I’d say that that I thank them often for lessons learned. I’d tell them that I was sorry for being a shit son, and that I’m sorry that I was too selfish to be a proper brother when my little brother, who came along when i was almost 23, needed a brother. I just wasn’t into little kids at that stage of my life. If I’d been more present, I’d have a closer relationship with all three of them, but again, it’s one of those roads not taken problems, I’d be a totally different person than I am now. Heck, I might have decided to have a kid with my first wife at that time, and my son/daughter and brother would have grown up together aa uncle-nephew/niece. And I would have made completely different career choices because I’d have been responsible for a young one.
As it was, my first wife and I were in “agreement” that we didn’t want kids. We tried for a minute, but she miscarried and we didn’t really process what that meant, it because just one of those things we didn’t talk about. Now I have some tools that I believe I could have a grown up conversation, but really who is an actual grown up when they’re in their mid 20s? (people who have children,) She ended up getting pregnant shortly after our divorce, so maybe the childless thing was all me.
As for what traits I wish i had more of, it would have to be follow-through. Obviously, being someone who experienves ADHD, that has been at least a factor in many of my failures as well as successes. I might have (or even now might still have) finished more projects that I was excited about but never completed. The synth, the 4 year degree I didn’t quite finish, countless projects I was all excited about but got bored with. In my darker moments, I think it’s amazing i ever finished anything.
So this combination of questiona kind of blended into one big topic…
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