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I ponder a lot. It is too slow to be called thinking. My slow, ponderous thoughts can be better described as pondering. When I ponder my thoughts often turn to the past. Life has been good thus far and I love remembering special moments. My wife walking down the aisle. My children's births and many of their firsts. Praying with my grandmother. Many of the occasions where I had the privilege of introducing a person to Jesus. Walking the streets of New York. Conversations with my mom. The list continues on and on. It is good to treasure our memories.
What memories do you treasure? Ponder on often?
During these musings, I often think about the decisions I made in specific situations. And I second-guess myself. They say hindsight is 20/20 and I do not just question the decisions that led to a negative result. The goal is improvement and I re-visit even the decisions I deem to have been the right ones. Hopefully, this will help me to make better decisions should I ever encounter similar situations.
In this way, I often discover things I could have or should have done in situations. Sometimes I stumble across something I could have attempted or enjoyed in a given situation. But I missed out on it because I was too focussed on a specific aspect or too panicked about another. Thus I often think these words: 'If only...' If only I had done this. Or enjoyed that. Or spent a little more time on that.
It is not a sad train of thought filled with frustrating remorse. It is just a discovery. If only... I could have... That would have been great, but I missed it in the moment.
The lesson I learnt from this is simply this. I can do nothing about the past but I can be more aware in my current moment or situation. It would be awesome if I could discover the things I'm missing while I'm in the moment. To accomplish this it is important to pause every now and then to consider what 'If only' will I discover when I look back on this moment or this situation.
No one will ever be able to have 20/20 vision in any given situation. It may not be fully possible even with hindsight but it would be great to improve my peripheral vision and just be more aware in any situation.
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@reonlouw
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I love to ponder, but my thoughts typically slip off into the absurd rather quickly. I may start by wondering why my cat has a little pouch hanging off of his round, furry belly, and next thing I know I'm searching the internet for more information about the sexual headgear of dinosaurs and realizing that my cat has more in common with a dino than I ever would have guessed.
Except that it doesn't stop there. I'll find myself in the next hours and days still thinking about that primordial pouch on my cat's belly and pondering how that relates to what we refer to as a beer belly. Are they related? Is a beer belly a survival mechanism for a person who consumes (arguably) too much beer and therefore cannot protect him- or her- self from the hind claws of a leopard otherwise? Whoa...did they even have beer back when we were evolving the requirements to give us beer bellies today? If not beer, than what would they have which would enable such an interesting survival mechanism?
See what happens? Now I'm back to the internet to learn more about evolution, natural selection, and intelligent design. I'm sure they all have interesting things to say about the development of the primordial pouch.
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If Only
Those two words force me to think and reflect. It's as if the dam of my mind has been broken and thoughts rush out freely. I'm going to share as much as I can here.
One of the things I often tell myself is to let the past remain in the past. It isn't always easy though. Especially when you feel you're going up everyday and you don't have much to show for it.
Of course there have been the good days. Times when I have impressed myself and those around me. But those times are rare and far in between.
These days, I simply focus on making the best decisions. This way, even when I make mistakes, I would be assured that I made the best out of the situation.
Another thing is to be grateful. Really, I've been through a lot and I'm standing. I'm not talking about misfortune. I'm talking about finding myself. I think I lost myself while growing. Some something related to bad company.
I realise I don't know everything. Even when I look back and appraise myself, I know I'm doing that from a limited perspective.
I know all things ultimately work together for good. I only need to trust and do the right thing at the right time.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts @reonlouw
Blessings
Hmm...not sure if these will be of any help but I might add some thoughts. IMO, this happens to everyone. I have soo many of these remorses and often think if only...but I gueess it's just the nature of our brains. Want more, think where did we go wrong etc. There's nothing bad about it and running away from those thoughts might actually not be healthy. The trick IMO is how to handle them. I guess there are 2 things to do:
Ask what should I learn from this "If only" - so if I'm in the similar situation in the future, I'll do the decision which doesn't cause the If only again
Ask what good did I get from not taking the wished of "If only" way -
everything has some positives. We might be happier if we've done things differently, but we can't change it. And the things are how they are. It's important to realize had we done it the other way, we might be missing some other stuff. It's important to find this stuff, enjoy it and appreciate it
Dunno, I'm just rambling tho :D
Hello @reonlouw
It is very reflective what you say,
you mention that you would like to increase your peripheral vision to be able to perceive more things.
I think it could rather distract us from the importance of the present moment, for some reason even the brain itself, even when thousands of thoughts per minute arise, we only process a few, which we consider important.
However, we can always be aware of more than what we process, our senses capture so much information, that if we focus only on hearing, we understand the perception in the other senses.
Accumulate memories, that is very important, it is definitely what we remember when the years have passed and old age is our reality, we must always give ourselves the opportunity to live new things with our relatives, pets, people we just know, that's what that makes our life meaningful, beyond money, of belongings.
Thank you for opening this wonderful reflection sites.
