If you could, would you go back and make different choices?

When I was in second grade, my mom got her GED. I went with her and just because I had nothing better to do, I took the pretest while she was taking the real thing.  We both did very well and the person giving the test jokingly said I should come back next week and take the real test and get my GED and get an early start on college.

I remember thinking to myself that would be insane.  I was seven, who could have possibly taken me seriously? Many hours were spent pondering this concept. And I could never imagine it, literally.  My main reason for not doing it was peer pressure, or really imagined pressure from my peers.  And I just could not shake the belief and possibly even fear, that due to my age, I would get taken advantage of in one way or another. What person between the ages of 20 and 50 is gonna give a seven year old the time of day, especially if that kid is acing classes that they are struggling with.

I have thought about it a lot over my lifetime. This was like thirty years ago, before the once popular TV show, Doogie Houser.  When that show came out I thought about it even more. Oddly enough, I never have watched a single episode though. It has occurred to me that I could probably have gotten a triple doctorate by the time I was nineteen or twenty. I mean scholarships and grants would not have been a problem. I have seen first hand that if you maintain a minimum of a 4.0 GPA, schools will bend over backwards to keep you.

If I had made that choice, my annual average salary instead of being five digits would likely be six or seven.  I would have easy access to a lot of creature comforts that are far outside my grasp even now.  The bottom line is, things would be different. The monetary and material things that I would have would be great.

But if I had made that choice, I would never have gone to the high school I did. I would never have met my best friend growing up. We would never have spent hundreds of hours with dozens of different roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, Rifts and Vampire the Masquerade. I would never have met the people we gamed with  or dated any of the people that I was close to in my teenage years.  I never would have gone through the truly life altering experiences I had with Lifespring, that occurred as a result of knowing one of the people I gamed with. The connections that I made, that led to where I am today would all have never happened.  I would not be living with the people that I am today.

If I had gone to college at age seven, my story would be completely different than it is. I like my story and I love who I am as a result of the choices that I have made.  I have made mistakes. But I have always done my best to learn from them.  If I never made them in the first place, then I would not have learned anything from them. So while there are things that I wish I had never done, if I had my life to live all over again I would still make the same choices.

Now I ask you, can you say the same? Think about your life and where you are today. Are you happy with it? If not what changes can you make so that you are happy with your life? You can not change the past. But you can make better choices in the future, when faced with choices that are similar to the ones that you regret having made.