Do it right, or don't do it at all

[unixronin]

jenkitty asks, If you could get one "do-over" -- that is, if you could go back in time and change one decision or action you've ever made, what would it be?  What do you think would be different now, in your psyche or circumstances?  Don't reply directly in my LJ; post this meme, with your answer to the question, in your own LJ and post the link as a reply here.

This is a question I've considered many times.  I think as long as it's restricted to one action or decision of mine, then there's really nothing there's any point in changing, because I feel I've made so many wrong or simply bad decisions in my life that if I went back and tried to change any of them, it's far more likely than not that I'd just make matters worse.  I have hated the vast majority of my life, in more ways and for more reasons than I know how to explain, many of them not even things I've ever had the least control over or the power to do anything about.  I don't need to go screwing it up even worse.  However careful I was, it'd probably turn out that in taking my best shot at making things better, I'd just second-guessed myself on one of the few things that (whether I was aware of it or not) actually turned out for the best in the first place.

Now if I could just go back and retroactively edit myself out of the Universe altogether, that would be very tempting.  Sometimes you just have to look at something and admit that you screwed it up so badly, you'd have done better to leave it alone in the first place.

Comments

[databeast.livejournal.com]

heh, yeah, I know the 'my life is 99% embarrassment' paranioa. Sums me up pretty well.

At the same time however... I'm going to make an obGeek Trek reference here, namely, the *only good* piece of dialogue from Star Trek V (the really shitty one"

McCoy: "Keep your filthy vulcan hands away from my Pain! You take away my pain and you take away who I am!"

It's not so much that 'changing something might make matters worse', it's more than 'changing something would change who you are today' - and there you get into reall fun paradoxical territory. How would you start to assess whether that alternate version of you is 'better' or not?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Then again, one could argue that if you don't like what you are anyway....

My first wife once told me that she thought I didn't know how to be happy. I keep thinking that maybe she was right.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

You know how to be happy. You don't know how to be content. Happiness for you is an emotion of an hour not a day or a week.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Now if I could just go back and retroactively edit myself out of the Universe altogether, that would be very tempting.

Ummm, I don't think you want to do that. See, if it weren't for you, I probably wouldn't have met k_crow, and then I wouldn't have ended up in Seattle, and, well, see, we just figured out how to Take Over The World And Set It Free, and, well, see, that won't happen if you go edit yourself out.

You think I'm kidding. Just you wait.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

But, Brain, where are we gonna get four hundred pairs of rubber underwear and a bulldozer at this time of night?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Rubber pants? Under a KILT?!

The bulldozer is easy.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, you know .... a kilt can get awful drafty on a motorcycle.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Kilt on a motorsickle? what, are you crazy?

Wait, don't answer that.... ;)

[k-crow.livejournal.com]

As I once pointed out to you several years ago, you've done more good and touched more lives in positive ways, than you have ever given yourself credit for. technoshaman is right, neither he nor I would be in the places we are today, and with the people we are today, without your influence and presence in the Universe.

For myself, I have never been happier in my life, even with the downsides to my life. I am taking more and more steps to becoming who I am, and who I want to be. Yes, a lot of that is me and my choices and where they have led me. At the same time, a lot of the choices I have made I wouldn't have discovered as options for many more years, or maybe ever, without you.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Aye, so you did. Sometimes, though, it's hard to see anything but the harm and the failures, the humiliations and the dreams that never came to pass.

I'm glad you know who you want to be. I'm still not certain I've figured it out yet. I'm not certain I ever will, and none of the things I most wanted to do are anywhere near being within reach.

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

i>I'm glad you know who you want to be. I'm still not certain I've figured it out yet. I'm not certain I ever will, and none of the things I most wanted to do are anywhere near being within reach.

I haven't figured it out either. Some days I'm quite sure that I never will. But I have done things that I never set out to do, and touched lives I did not know would impinge upon my own, and some of the ways in which that has happened have worked out for good. It's a bit like being amouse on a tapestry - I can see the colours, but not the pattern.

Um. Small hug very tentatively offered?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And accepted with thanks (and returned).

Sometimes lately I fell I'm hanging on by my fingernails, and I'm scared to make any decisions for fear of making the wrong decision.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I don't feel like memeing my journal, so I'll just say, "I'd bloody well move to California back when everybody who knew how to turn a computer on was making money hand over fist instead of finishing my college degree first."

My mother did at least have the good sense to apologize for insisting that I not move when I first planned on it.

-Ogre