Life through a rear-view mirror, and a telescope. (Or, what will you wish had happened this year?)

Recently I caught myself thinking, I wish the last 12 months hadn’t happened. With my redundancy, having to move away from friends and the life I had (and enjoyed), and generally things not working out as I’d hoped, I guess I have good reason to look back and wish things were how they were before it all.

But life’s not like that.  And, honestly, when I really think about, I think that’s a good thing. 

I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for all that so-called ‘character building’ stuff.  Each situation taught me something, changed me, took me down a different path – and that process goes on.  Things might be, frankly, pretty shit sometimes, but nothing lasts forever – ‘This too shall pass’. And sometimes that can be a great solace, I find.

 (I love this video - any excuse to include it!)

Having said that, I don’t want to have another year I wish I could erase.  Obviously, some of that isn’t in my control, but I started wondering if I can live life with a sort of reverse perspective: imagine myself in 12 months looking back at something, and then decide whether I want to do it or not.  Will I regret it?  Will I regret NOT doing it?  Will it even matter to me as much as it feels like it does now?  If not, why worry about it so much now?  (I think Don Miller wrote something about this a while back on his blog, but I can't find it.)

And, I also want to look ahead too and think about what things I’ll wish had happened in this next 12 months*, and what can I do now to help make them happen.  And then ‘get on it’, as a good friend of mine says.

So there you go – life through a rear-view mirror and a telescope.  Too weird?

*Perhaps the biggest problem with all this is which tense to use!