Do you ever think that things would have been different if.....

Good morning Jen, i think u turned out just fine. I guess things happen for a reason. My parents were in my life but i strived to be a better parents than they were. I guess we are dealt the deck we are for a reason. Things happen that we don't understand & never will . We just have to do the best we can w/what we are given & be thankful for what we have . i wish i had been close to my parents & i always envied people that were but it just wasn't meant for me to be for some reason. Happy sunday to u. hugs.

There are too many "what ifs" that I have that I dont even have a list for them! haha What I do now, is just try to do everything with all my best and hope for the best outcomes too. Since we all can't change our pasts, why not focus on the future? Ever heard of a thing called fate? Yeah as some might disagree, it is actually our past which has bcome our memory. I guess nobody could say that by changing something/everything in the past would do any good to him or her. I always like to take it as, whatever happens in the past, that's what made me who I am right now. Whatever problem that I'm facing right now, I'm the one who can solve it. Whatever burden that I have, I am the one who can carry it. Live life as it is...find meanings...find peace....there's a lot of things to think about really! Get busy with these questions and gradually you'll forget about the "WHAT IFs" :)

love this topic! what if :) i haven't finish my journey so i can't describe my what if... :) but i do realize that i've been grown up in unhealthy family. My mom has her negative thinking in every where, suspicious kind of woman and somehow even i always reject her opinion, sometimes i tend to think like the way she thinks. Living together for 20 years, can't control the habit. And my dad can't do anything about this one, he choose to let my mom says anything bcos he doesn't wanna fight. I know arguing in a family is normal, but in my family every arguing seems so fairytale, out of context of life. Every arguing that my mom started always about her thought of something that almost imposible to happen. Sometimes i like to think where did she get all of those thoughts. My 'what if' is... if i had positive thinking mom, i wouldn't be like this.. it affect my secure as a person, and i hate the life's going on. Hope i can get through and solve my journey :)

I am sorry you have this conflict. I believe in fate and Karma. (If I didn't I would be in a nut ward somewhere and they would have thrown away the key by now!)Things in our lives happen for a reason and we need to work it through and be okay with it or it is going to drive us NUTS! Hence my delima. I hate 'what ifs' and sister I sure have them! Remember the guy I asked you if you knew there in Morristown? He is a sweet heart. I like him so much. I wish I could earn a whole lot of money and register for one of his tours and go meet him. I would probably be mortified(I AM SOOOO SHY!) and embarrass myself tremidously some how.Well, I did it again! (Why can't I just be straight with him and if he doesn't return my emails be good with it? No, not me!)I have to set this whole yarn in motion and he usually sees through it. This time I backed off real early. Ugh! Demented or what??????!!!!!!!!

Hi Jen~ I think about the "what if's" all the time. My Mother sure won't let me forget that I have not done a single thing right in my life, according to her. I used to ask her if I was adopted. I had a terrible childhood, which I've told you about before. My Mother actually has said to me that she wishs she had never married my father and then she wouldn't have had me or brother (who is deceased now for 23 years). So how do you like her "what if's"? And I wish that she had never married my father too!

That's called fantasies, everyone does it, I would be surprised if noone though what it would be if... It would make a great difference for me if I hadn't got a brother, in the bad way. It makes me a better person for my friends, I can be very compassionate about friends and that comes from my brotherly love. It's the best thing, so really I don't want to think what it would be if I hadn't a brother. Maybe if I lived in a house it would be better for me and the way I think, but that's not unreachable goal, so seeya after:)

Sure, I've had plenty of "what if's". What if my parents hadn't gotten divorced? What if my mom hadn't moved my sister and I away? What if my sister and I had actually gotten along? What if I had done better in school? What if I won the lottery? etc, etc. But out of them all, the biggest "what if" for me would have to be what if my oldest wasn't autistic? Would it really make things better? My husband and I have actually spoken about this before. And we know that if our oldest was typical that he might be even worse. And with knowing this it has really helped us to appreciate him just the way he is.

i used to think things like that too, that if my father had guided us maybe we are all going to be winners instead of losers har har har. i knew a lot of people who wish for what they want to be and they achieved it. because of proper guidance they are achievers. but its not yet too late, i have a son right now and me and my wife will do everything for him to be guided so he can be what he wants to be.

i think if i had stayed with my dad instead of wanting to go with my mom that later i found out didnt give a crap for me. my whole life would have been different. i think i would have concentrated more on my schooling, being able to stay in one place and have family that really cared about me. i would have been more educated and probably would have written great novels like i always wanted.

I have often thought about a pivotal decision that I made quite a few years ago in the 90's. I was in the process of asking a girl out on a date, I liked her and I knew that she liked me but I never asked her out as my ex-girlfriend was coming to visit from interstate in the next month and I was not sure what was going to happen with her. My ex and I still communicated on the phone every week and got along really well, but I was unsure whether or not we could get back together. I knew that if I asked this girl out, then my ex and I would never get back together. I decided to leave it and see how our time went together as I knew my ex and I got along, but I was not sure how the new girl and I would get along. My ex-girlfriend and I got along really well together again, so well in fact that I sent her home pregnant. She rang me to tell me a few weeks later. We then decided to get back together and see how it went. We are now married with two wonderful kids. But I do often wonder where I would be and how life would be if I had gone out with the other girl and stopped any chance that we had of getting back together. Our relationship has often been rocky, but I still love her and I would not take back my decision if I had the chance to go back in time.

I agree that at some point we like to look back at how well we do and compare that product to the work done by our elders, in particular our parents. Parents make mistakes too, just as many as we do, more or less. I think if we survived this far, we must have done very good and are able to see the difference of which you write about. What is important is that we can recognize flaws, and we should try and not fall on them or worst for ourselves and that of our children.

I would have been completely a different person if my wife was alive now. Worse still, even I could not have found time to join MyLot and respond to this discussion !! For I would have been busy listening to my wife yelling, children crying, and working 9-to-10 tirelessly to fulfill their needs. I would have been a practical man then, not a lazy thinking man like now. Life would have been spicy then, not plain and simple like now.

I feel if I had been discriminate about choosing my friend in the early stages of my life then of course my life would have been a lot different. Being with wrong sort of friends I picked up some bad habits, some bad ideas, that had changed the course of my life. Seeing their life style at one stage, I wanted to give up my studies. I told my parents that it is enough to earn a living. However, my parents never gave in and they persuaded me to study further. If it were not for them, I would have made a mess of my life. I am thankful that I had my parents to guide me whenever I found myself of the cross road of life. Another thing I regret is that I took decision to get married quite early in life. I got married while I was just 21. I blame my parents for they gave in to my pleas. Had they been more resolute I would have procrastinated my wedding. This would have given me some time to settle in life. Due to early marriage, we had more children, greater responsibility and trials, troubles and tribulations, which come with it. However, if I look at a brighter side of it my children and grandchildren have made my life more than colorful.

I am from a broken home. Yes, things would be different but in this course of life i have taken, I have learned a lot of things - things I wouldn't realize if I was a different person. So i have come to love my life because of the things I have learned. With the many possibilities, i think the best me is what i am now even though i am not perfect but i perceive and handle things very well. what about you? do you think you are the best person you can be? if life experiences has made you that way, would you still long to change the way you are now?

When I was young I heard this "proverb" "If there were no IF, I would be king of China!" It is kind of difficult to go back and change the past, even if we all have done something foolish in our life. The best is to learn from it and go on. The same solution must be best when things were outside our control. "If you get a lemon, make lemonade!" We can use our experience for making wise choices from now on and help others to do the same..

So many things have happened to me over the past few weeks and it made me assess the decisions and choices that I made in my life. I used to say that everything is okay even if it meant that I was losing myself as long as many people will benefit and that it will bring peace and harmony to those I love. But it seems pointless when the time comes that I need a little care and comfort because the people that I have cared for and given up so much of my life for, just abandons me in the end. So, right now, I am wondering what my life could have been if I have become more selfish and allowed myself to live a life for myself instead of worrying about other people. I have always put my needs last.

What if my parents never separated and me and my other siblings grow up in a happy and close family. Our life could have been better and we might have lots of happy memories stored in our mind and could have help us during the worst storm in our lives. But then we can never turn back time and some people just made mistake and one of that is my parents. But I still love them very much. With out them i will never be there in this world. I guess the pain is just a feelings that I can always erase if I wanted to anytime. My family is one thing that mold me for what I am now and I will be forever grateful for them.

Yes quite often actually, my up bringing had meany ups and downs and was very differnt from what others consider the norm, and those thoughts often cross my mind because sometimes I think maybe my life would have be better or somthing. But then I realize that its pointless to thank that way, and now its more of just a reflex thought, meaning the thoughts are more involuntary. they come mostly when I'm experiencing an unhappy moments in my life, but when I'm feeling content and happy the thoughts pass much faster and a moment of clarity occurs and then I realize that even though I'm not exactly where I want to be in life things could have be much worse, and that I've been given some wonderful blessings and maybe the blessings I have right now would be gone if my life had been differnt, and I also realize that I cant live my life dwelling on the past and I still have a lot of great things to look forward to in my life.

I don’t have good parents and I can honestly say that they treated my sister and I quite badly as we were growing up. It still hurts to think about it as I remember that I missed out on love and affection and received abuse instead. I often wonder what my sister and I could have become if we had grown up with our self esteem intact but what has happened is our destiny and my guess is that our pain may help others in the future, you never do know...

Sometimes I think if I would have went to graduate school and pursued becoming a psychologist, things would have been different. Instead, I work in finance at a job I really can't stand and think I would have been better of helping people with their problems, my friends are always coming to me with theirs.