Part 21

The hesitancy

great podcast

I sometimes get distracted by the notion of what would happen if I could stop myself from ever meeting Michelle, and thus never having her abandon me at age 60  - too old to start over but having to  - and thus leading to the greatest pain of my life.    This gaping chasm that 4 years later I am still trying to crawl out of.   I think what if I went back to that moment of meeting her knowing what I know now, and thus avoiding the great pain that would come 30 odd years later.

In other words, What if I blinked, and I was suddenly back in that moment in my 28 years old body, but with my 65 year old sense of self.    What would I do?

I think it would drive me mad.     While there would be obvious benefits in that once again I would have a 28 year old body, with all of its quickness, strengths and reserves, in addition to having the knowledge of what companies are going to increase 1000 fold in stock price, it would still drive me mad because I could not be sure of ever having Mara and Jana again.    No matter how my life turned out, for better or worse,  there would be no Mara and Jana to live with.    I do not think I would be able to handle that walking through life again and knowing that.

I would also wonder about just the energy that would be required to go through another life again, having just lived that life.    To be 28 and know that I would be walking through the same cultural history again.     i am not completely sure I would want to do it.

On the third hand, there is the thought that I could go back and get the cute girls I never got in the first place, knowing what I know now about how little courage it would take.     

There is a movie called "Never been Kissed" which touches upon this about a very young looking 30 year old journalist doing an investigative piece on the local high school and deciding to re-enroll into that school under a fake name, with the idea that THIS TIME, she will know how to be the popular girl, instead of the nerd she was the first time around.     What happens of course is that she reenrolls and once again cannot stop from being the smartest and smarmiest one in her classes,  and she ends up being a nerd again, despite her best efforts otherwise.    She is who she is.

I think about this, about the chance to do things over and being better, or a different person the second time around, and I wonder if it can be done.    I have always been a very internalized person, who thinks too much on things.  On everything.    If I went back thinking I could get all the girls this time around, there is a good chance that my over thinking and my shyness would once again take hold and stymie me in exactly the same ways as the first go around.

Also.   Also this.     I am 65 and have still managed to be financially independent.  What if I end up doing worse the second time around?    What if I did better? Invested in Apple, Microsoft and Amazon and became wealthy.    I would still know that Michelle Mara and Jana were not in my life this second time around.  The weight of that.   I do not know how I could handle that.

One thing I have learned about financial independence is that it is quite different from happiness.   You can have enough money, and still be lonely and alone.   The weight of that.

There is a Russian man somewhere who wrote a book about having been both poor and wealthy and he says that personalities do not change.   Miserable poor people make miserable wealthy people.   Positive poor people make positive minded wealthy people.    You are who you are.    I cannot know whether this is true of not.   I pencil it in on one side of the page to think about.

I seem to be built from a kind.   Intuitive, but obstinate.   Humble but Arrogant. Clever, but often Too Self Confident.   An Independent Loner.    All my life's successes and failures in somewhat equal measure attributed to these characteristics.

Our greatest superpowers are our greatest weaknesses as well.   Now there's an idea for a video game.   Or a book.  Or a story.  Or a life.