Paperwork: In the shadows of my life are the choices I did not make

I have pride. And I have shame.

That’s the yin and the yang of life. The ups and the downs.

Can’t change the past but there are moments I pause and reflect on how I got where I am. I retrace the path I followed and the choices I made.

It’s not about do-overs or regrets. It’s more a mood of wonderment. I am amazed at what I was able to do but I also recognize the failures. Again that yin and yang.

I am the product of what I have done. Where I have been. Who I have been with. I am the result of a lifetime of cause and effect.

But ... wait ... what if the path we follow is not the real reason we stand where we are now? What about those paths we chose not to take? Perhaps the choices we do not make are just as significant. Like all those times I went left instead of right. Those times I didn’t open the door and go inside but turned around and went home. All those things I gave up on or did not pursue.

Such thoughts make one wonder about the what-ifs. What if I had chosen a different career? What If I had learned to play the piano, an early dream?

Author Rachel Marie Martin offers some solid advice via books and her blog on findingjoy.net. Her introductory page sets the tone with this thought: “Sometimes you have to let go of the picture of what you thought it would be like and learn to find joy in the story you are actually living.”

Good advice if you’re stuck on the what-ifs. Sometimes I ponder such thoughts but, like I said, it’s not about regrets or do-overs. Instead, it helps me recognize that each day is full of choices. Some good and some bad. Hello again yin and yang. It’s a mixed bag I just have to carry.

I’ve been bumping into those little billboards that tend to pop up on the highway of life. (Thank you social media.) I keep seeing guide posts about life and the choices we make.

I saved that Martin quote. Then I came across author Joan Didion and something she said about choices we make in life. Even the little ones.

The quote is pulled from her essay “Goodbye to All That”​ in her book “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” in which she dissects what it was like to be young in New York.

She wrote: “That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”

So true. Those little choices I make every day still count, they are part of the tally and summation of the day, the continuing story of me.

These thoughts often push me up against the ever-nagging wish list – those things I should and could still be doing. Those choices I still get to make every day. Or sadly do not make.

I was reminded of this even today when Facebook friend Sarah posted this observation: “Whatever you’re not changing, you’re choosing.”

Another reminder that my story is as much about what I have not done as what I have done. Perhaps more so because those untested dreams are baggage I carry every day. Heavy and soaked in guilt.

All this advice I’ve shared seems worthy. I could spend a lot of time evaluating who I am and who I am not. I hope to do better and will try.

But in the end, I am what I am. The yin and the yang.

• Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His Paperwork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.