That’s another difficult question. I change my mind every other day, mostly nowadays about small things. But about big things over the years?
I really don’t know how to answer it because I see that a lot of my adult life has been not so much about changing my mind as dealing with the consequences of decisions I made or events that happened to me. And as I coped and dealt, that’s meant changing direction, sometimes physically, sometimes mentally/emotionally. For example, I’ve been stubborn sometimes, hanging on to relationships that I should have let go of, leaving places and people when perhaps it would have been better if I had stayed.
I think I valued, at least for the past many decades, having an “open mind” rather than sticking to decisions because I felt that people who are afraid to change their minds get stuck into lives and careers that they regretted later in life. In that kind of thinking I was influenced by seeing the people around me, by reading books about unhappy people, watching movies about unhappy people. And being unhappy myself whenever I felt closed in by my circumstances and not liking how I was living.
Oh there’s absolutely nothing wrong with sticking to a plan and living in the same place your whole life, being married to the same person, working at the same job. It didn’t happen for me but I have met plenty of contented people and THAT’s what I think we strive for … to be contented in our later life. Sometimes, as with me, that kind of contentment takes decades to achieve and it’s only achieved through a lot of losses and near misses that now make me very much appreciate where I am at. I feel blessed I came through all of those changes in direction without losing myself in the process and spiraling down into depression, poverty, abuse. Believe me, I know how close I came on many occasions!
If I were to look at this question in terms of life lessons or advice I would give to my family, I would say that it’s important to understand yourself first because it’s in NOT understanding ourselves that we cause the most upheaval and insecurity in our lives. In a way it’s a kind of following your gut but, at the same time, we need to understand where those “gut instincts” are coming from. Are they coming from a fear that we aren’t smart enough or good enough—and is that because someone told us that? Those types of “gut instincts” should be set aside—we are as “smart” as we work to be and we are good enough to deserve everything we plan and work toward becoming. But mainly we are as “strong” as we believe ourselves to be and it’s in cultivating that strength, by gathering good, supportive people around us, by seeking out the very best knowledge we can (and there is NO shortage of that kind of knowledge out there nowadays unlike when I was young!), and by understanding that as the Byrds sang:
To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
A time to buid up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rain, a time of snow
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
Again, there’s an irony that, as I read these words, as I think about those words we used to sing so many times when I was in my late teens/early 20s, it’s really only now that I can really look at them and understand the wisdom behind them, which comes from a passage in Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.
So it’s not so much about “changing [our] minds” and being told, sometimes, that that’s a “bad” thing. No, it’s more about becoming wise enough to know that our minds are very adaptable, very trustworthy. If we are willing to work as hard at knowing ourselves as we do at whatever else takes our fancy of the moment ;)
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