Have you ever played a game, in your mind, that asks the question; What would I say to my younger self if I could go back in time, or what would I change given that opportunity?
I know that I have. Sometimes I will be thinking of various scenarios of things that have gone on before where I made a total idiot of myself or did something that got me in a lot of trouble and then I think of what I might have said or done to change it. It is pure fantasy and I know it's impossible, but if you could would you really change things?
There is an episode of Star Trek, Next Generation, where the dreaded "god like" creature known as "Q" takes Captain Picard back to a time where he had a fight that almost got him killed, this was the one event that Picard said he would change if he could. He did, he avoided the fight, but then everything in his world changed. "Q" then brings him back to the present where everything in his world is different. Instead of being the Captain of a star ship, with a notable record, he is a science officer on the Enterprise who has but a mediocre future at best.
The short end is that he goes back again , has the fight, almost dies but then everything is returned to what it was.
I know it was just a show, but you know I think it speaks to the heart of all of us a bit.We often dream of how things might have been better if...pick your if, but then you wouldn't be the person you are now. Your world might improve, but then again you stand the chance of it being worse.
I know a man personally, who spent a good chunk of his adult life in prison for a crime that he didn't commit. He had some hard choices as to how he was going to spend that time ( he was sentenced to 99 years ) he could go out and kill the next person that he saw and there would be nothing that they could do to him , or he could choose to try and do something positive while he was there. He picked the positive route and wrote many books and articles, that wound up being published, and he was able to positively influence many people including me. My grandmother wrote to him about her juvenile delinquent grandson, me, and he responded by sending me tapes from his prison cell telling me all about the " glories " of prison life. I can tell you it made a difference for me.
I bet if you asked him, he would probably say that he wished that he had never gone to prison, but then on the other hand if he hadn't, if he had made some different decisions, then he might not have had the time to write and to counsel troubled youth. I am not advocating prison here, I am just saying that his past, effected my past, and I am better for it, and now that he is out he is working with troubled youth making a difference for them.
In reality, I don't think I would change anything about my youth. Yes I was a delinquent, and yes my growing up years were hard, but now I am able to empathise with others that have gone through the same kinds of things. My wife and I get along real well because we come from similar backgrounds. I have spent a lot of my time around younger adults and teenagers, whom I can relate to and help, because I have been in their shoes.
I have been to war, I have seen the ugliness associated with it, but that again helps me to understand the younger men and women as they come back from war. I would not change any of it because I am able, through the grace and timing of G-D, to help others .
G-D tells us in Psalms 139 that he knows everything that there is to know about us ; Psalms 139:1-6
O LORD, You have searched me and known me.You know my sitting down and my rising up;You understand my thought afar off.You comprehend my path and my lying down,And are acquainted with all my ways.For there is not a word on my tongue,But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.You have hedged me behind and before,And laid Your hand upon me.Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;It is high, I cannot attain it.
Some of you reading this might be thinking ; That if G-D knows all this already then why doesn't He fix things? I would reply to that by saying that if G-D does know us and has ordered our lives the way that they are, then surely He knows what is best, not only for us, but in the future as to how we might do good for others. He saw you suffering and also saw that through that suffering you might be able, if you are willing, to help others who are in the same boat. We live in a world full of heart ache and tragedy, but it is also filled with people who know that tragedy and suffering and are able to use that knowledge in the helping of others.
When the time of G-D's kingdom comes and His anointed one is in place, then will come a time for the healing of the nations and a return to what G-D meant for us in the first place. See Ezekiel 36:33-35, 47:12.
It will be then that we will have to answer to G-D for our lives ,and I never want it to be said of me that I whined so much about my "rotten childhood" that I refused to help others who were in need as I was.
Can I wish that some things had been different? Yes. But reality sets in and I know that I am able to help people only because I understand what it is that they are going through.
No, I will never be a star ship Captain, but it will be enough for me to know that I have done the will of G-D and have served Him by serving others. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the kingdom of G-D then have all the riches of the world but be useless to others.
Something to consider,
Shalom,
Ignacio
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