DESCARTADO, Spanish for that which is discarded…..and our life is full of those.

Tiny crosses, symbolic of mourning a passing.

In the Latino heritage, descartado dot the roads and paths of the countryside. They are the little crosses that mark where a passing occurred. Someone has died, right at that point. The cross is a means of honoring that spirit, and remembering. It’s important while you are alive to revisit your descartado in order to do them honor. It’s because of those discarded choices that you are where you are today. By reviewing those choices, you can also see if perhaps a decision made to let something go might be worth rendering.  We make decisions daily that affect our life. Some of those decisions were made long ago. Some were made yesterday, some, just today…like the degree to follow in college, the color of pants to wear for work, calling your mother for her birthday, dating a person who could possibly be the love of our life. Our life is filled with decisions, one after another, and each decision weighs on the next, just like the tiles in dominos. Sometimes we discard things we shouldn’t. We choose plaid pants over black ones. We forget to call mom on her special day. We choose a profession that is a dead end. And we don’t ever let our guard down enough to make that special connection with that someone we are dating, and because of that we let them walk out of our life forever. Just examples of poor choices one makes.So what if we had a do-over, a chance to revisit those decisions that we discarded for the choice of something else? Perhaps now, with new knowledge, that path we once thought about, and then chose something else, should be reconsidered? There is a multitude of reasons why things could be different this time around. Maybe our financial situation is now different and we could afford graduate school. Maybe our logistics are different and the commute to New York for that dream job wouldn’t be a hardship. Maybe we realize only after mom passes that we only get one mom, and we should have spent more time with her. And maybe we now see a relationship for what could have been. However, if the plaid pants are still in your closet then maybe you should take up golf after all.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Someone famous said that. We know it to be true. Decisions revisited now, with the wealth of knowledge we accumulated after we made that decision, allow us to realize those decisions were not always the correct choice, if only we had known what we do now. We can’t do anything about the fact avenues were unknown to us before, but now….now with hindsight, those choices might be worth revisiting.  

What would you do differently?

The weighing of the value of time and financial investment are something that in your fifth decade you begin to value at a different rate than say, what you might have valued at age twenty. At age twenty, the twilight of life was yet a far off glimmer. At age fifty-something, it is quite something different. The twilight of life is more like a roaring train.  We begin in our middle years to equate what sort of investment it is we are hoping to get in return for whatever action it is we do; with whatever time we have left. The question becomes, is it worthy of the investment? This is the very hard-to-say answer that everyone wants. Typically when it comes to decision making, a pencil and paper are required to settle the score. But under the sever scrutiny of hindsight, upon reviewing the descartado of our life, we can usually see whether something we left behind, something we discarded for something else, might be worth revisiting… and perhaps it is. But the question then becomes, do you do anything about that now? And then, can you?Think about walking a beach with the sole intent of picking up only black shells. You begin your walk and you pass over millions of brightly colored yellow and orange ones on this quest. The tide is still climbing farther and farther away while you walk, and more and more yellows and oranges are making themselves apparent. Somewhere you get an idea of using the orange and yellow shells to create something quite different than what you originally intended. And with the tide still out, you still have the opportunity to retrace your steps and capture what you might have had if your eyes had been open further….life is like that. Rethinking the descartado is important, to see whether you missed something that your heart might actually fancy, and whether you have the time to make the corrective adjustment. And if the tide is coming in, you will have but a second to reach for that yellow seashell before the water washes over it, removing it from your sight forever. Once we review the descartado of our life, we have to decide whether to react.

Personal Homework

Everyone should choose this assignment for a weekend. Make a timeline of your biggest decisions. Think of it as a review of your life. It’s always good to see how it is you got to where you are today. These are not the choices between wearing a black or red dress to a wedding, but rather on becoming a writer rather than a rocket scientist. It’s the big stuff, the stuff that altered your direction.Form your timeline. I suggest starting at age five, when you went to school. And note when your sister was born and you were no longer the youngest, or when you gave up ballet, and took up soccer, or when you didn’t play football for your high school team, but rather chose a different organization, which alienated you from your school friends. We are talking the BIG choices; the choices where you discarded something/someone, or something/someone was discarded for you.

While reviewing your life, you need to:

1.  Honor the choices that were left behind. 
2. See whether you missed something of significance.

Then the all important step is all that is left, deciding with what is left of life, whether the choices made must dictate what remains or whether the discarded ideas are worth reigniting. And what, if anything, you can do about that now.

Hindsight is 20/20.

What would you do if you were handed a do-over?...