Life is composed of decisions we make every day, in all aspects of our lives. Some decisions are trivial and some are life critical. It is not always clear which is which, however. At times we know that a decion we are in the throes of making is one which will change our lives in serious ways, possibly for the rest of our lives. Other decisons may make the Top 10 in our retrospective life summary at some point in the future. It can be hard to know.
Put yourself in current times and look back at your life. What would you tell yourself at any of these key junctures based on what you know today, knowing the outcome of the decision, the impacts it had, and how it changed your life? Can you pick out 3 key decisions you made that affected your life path, and that you might be willing to share with our group? What sort of categories do they fall into? Love? Career? Where to live? What to value in your life, and what to avoid?
In a current project I needed to come up with a timeline for my life, basically year by year, that included where I lived, what I was doing for education or employment, significant events in my life for each of these years, and so forth. It took a while to recall the key points I wanted to identify as memory markers that could be tied to all the other memories I have. Sorting and prioritizing memories is, for me, a great challenge.
As a kid of a university professor my earliest years were all tied to where my dad found his education (WSU) and the sucession of univeristy and college appointments he had after he graduated. I followed this same pattern through my own university and graduate school years where I can tie my memories to places and universities where we lived (there were a lot of them). Since moving back to the Everett area I have moved only 1 time in 39 years, from one side of Snohomish to the other, and have had 3 different employers. I worked for one employer for 21 years, and another for most of the balance of this time, prior to retirement 6 years ago. My point is that I lost the mileposts of location I had been using to link my earliest memories to, and then existed in a more static environment in "adult life". I've been in the same physical home place for almost 40 years.
Back to the topic. Through all this timeline thinking the decisions I made, with Judy's involvement, clearly made profound impacts on how my and our lives have turned out. These critical decisions jump off the page, as it were. Forks in the road. Momentous decisons. Decisions to develop ourselves, decisions to put down roots, decisions to make a family, and many more. What are the decisions you made that have formed the basis of your life's story?
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