What Would You Change?

Traveling in a car with five passengers and luggage stacked to the roof gives opportunity for closeness and conversation.   We had plenty of each on our recent trip to the heartland of America.  At some point between the hills of West Virginia, the bluegrass of Kentucky, the farm lands of Indiana and the Ozark Mountains, my mother-in-law introduced this interesting question, “If you could change anything in your life what would it be?”

Reflecting back I had lots of options from which to choose.  I would have traveled more as a young adult. I would have been less judgmental and more gracious. I would have avoided some teenage mistakes. I would have been less uptight with my kids.  I would have taken more risks.

All those answers are true but on a whim I said, “I wish I had applied myself as a student in order to have been a more well-rounded and enriched person.  By avoiding advanced math, literature, languages and composition, I have had to play catch up most of my life.  It would have been nice to have had a broader perspective early on.”  I’m sure there are a few high school teachers that would love to read this confession.   

It turned out to be a fantastic conversation that took up a couple of hours of driving time.   I thought even more about it when my daughter’s books arrived for the upcoming school year.  Out of the box came: Traditional Logic, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Saxon Advanced Mathematics, The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence, Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis among many others.

In one of them I read, “People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize.  By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world.  Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists.  Peoples lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world.  Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.”

Wow, if only.  What about you, if you could change anything in life what would it be?    

Art work by Christina