If I Knew Then What I Know Now.

Half a lifetime ago, I recall hearing people twice my age utter these words... "If only I knew then what I know now..." I would roll my eyes in my fifteen-year-old manner, and brush off the words like so many leaves on a plastic lawn chair.

Had I indeed known then what I know now, I would have listened to what came after those words, and perhaps I would have learned a little something about life before I'd made the same mistakes myself.

Unfortunately, I didn't have that bit of foresight. I was too interested in writing angsty poetry, and trying to fit in with groups in which I had no business being in the first place. I sought approval in people from whom common sense and a healthy dose of self-esteem may have steered me away. I struggled through high school, every day feeling more like a broken merry-go-round, spinning faster until I could no longer tell up from down, left from right, or top from bottom. Within two years of graduation, I'd gotten my first full time job, bought my first car, been in my first accident and totaled said car, had two surgeries, bought a house, got a new full time job, and got married. And still the acceptance for which I had been looking eluded me, fading away just beyond my reach.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have fought the inertia. I laugh at those who say they have no regrets. I feel sorry for those who convince themselves that all of their heartache was solely for the purpose of bringing them to the place in life they inhabit now.

I'm not above having thought those things in the past, I admit. However, I have a new view of life. My pain was not for the greater good. My poor decisions were not for the purpose of making better ones -- I mean, let's face it, I still make poor decisions, just on different choices. No, my past experiences were for a different purpose. For stretching. For being the very definition of growing pains. For giving me the push and ammunition to write. For hoping for something better.

Hoping for something better. That was it.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have known that there was the hope for something better. And hope would have changed the way I looked at the sunsets and sunrises, the way I looked at myself, and the way I looked at the world.

Hope...for something better.