Living Your Choices

Rev Kane in Ireland

Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. ~ Rev Kane

I’m posting an older picture of me tonight, I personally think it’s one of the two best pictures ever taken of me.  It’s also a reminder of travel, for regular readers, you know I’m a nomad.  The pandemic has led to the cancellation of three large trips and now four smaller trips which included cancelling two sets of time off from work.  So I’ve been working far too much and not wandering at all, which is not good for a nomad.  Work has also been a bear and I’m currently mentally drained.  I actually tried to unlock my front door with my car key FOB the other day.

Part of what has weighed me down right now is that I’ve recently had a retirement analysis done and I’ll need to work a year longer than I had anticipated.  Now, I deserve no sympathy on that, it still means I’ll be able to retire at 61 and have a nice pension in retirement.  Another thing on my mind is a position has opened up which is the type of position I was targeting when I took this job, but like then, whether or not to apply is likely coming down to a financial decision.  I’m fortunate to be in a job and a district that pays very well, so the choice is money versus a more attractive position.  Over my life that has been an easy decision, I’ve chosen the more attractive position.  However, closing in on retirement and given the way our pensions are calculated, finances may win out this time.  I’ve got about a week or so to decide.

The fact is I’m ok with my little dilemma  You see wherever you are, where I am now, is a result of all of the previous choices we’ve ever made.  If I chose the money over the position this time it’s ok.  You see I’m in this position because I took a lot of student loans in college, because I opted for better work/life balance over my career by taking gap years and by choosing to work in the retirement system that I’m in.  I think we are disingenuous when we say, if we could go back in time we wouldn’t change a thing, there are always things I believe all of us would have done differently.  However for me, there aren’t a lot, and given where I started in life, I’m pretty happy about where I’ve landed.

And this is the point for my post tonight, we’ve all made choices that have led us to where we are in our lives.  If we are satisfied with where we are, fantastic, if not, well then you need to make changes.  Our happiness very much depends on our ability to accept ourselves.  Acceptance is a necessary starting point to building a life around ourselves that we can be truly happy with and proud of.  There is also an aspect to acceptance that is important to think about, which is that you can’t expect things to be perfect.  At times, there are things that haven’t worked out the way we had hoped,  acceptance is the best option at these times particularly if you are dealing with things out of your control.

So friends tonight, join me in taking a second to sit back, reflect, be proud of what you’ve accomplished, accept what you can’t change and start planning to change the things you should.  Do this, and I promise you’ll have happier days. ~ Rev Kane