The Missus and I sometimes go down the What If road, especially concerning avoiding our respective 1st edition spouses. But it never gets too far because all of that crap was the road that brought us together. It’s all just dues we paid. We might both have done better if we’d played our cards differently, but the way things are, now, at last, is better than most have a right to expect.
I agree with you very much. It seems that many of the respondents believe that if one or two crossroad events had gone differently their lives would have been much better.
Mistakes that we make are lessons that we can learn from. I believe that there are many events in my life that to some extent was the result of myself being in the right place at the right time, resulting in opportunities that I was able to take advantage of. Someone might say that I was lucky. But I had a friend that used to say “that in order for you to get hit by the luck truck, you had to be standing in the street!” Meaning that you had to have taken the risk to put yourself in the path (or taken some sort of risk) to get hit by the luck truck,.as opposed to just sitting on the sidelines.
I sometimes will think about what if I hadn’t taken that job opportunity and moved across the country, of if I hadn’t met my wife, etc. etc. My life would have been much worse than it is.
What if a different sperm had made it to my mom’s egg, and I wound up being a girl? It may not make much difference today, but way back then the direction of my life would have been very different.