Brainless Blogger Nikki made a great point on her blog this last week:
“I know there is a price to be paid for everything I do. I have always thought about in terms of cost and benefit terms. There will be consequences but there will be benefits. There have been times were the cost was high but the benefit was worthwhile. And there are things we can do that have a low cost and a good benefit to our wellbeing.”
We all make choices every day that affect not just our day but our entire life. Often we look back and think about the things we should have done, we may even ruminate on those things, causing us more stress and grief. I’ve caught myself doing that a lot lately in regards to the finishing school. I’ve caught myself too many times thinking “I’m doing something I should have done 20 years ago…” but then if I stop and think about it, what would it have cost me, what would I have had to give up if I had finished school 20 years ago? How different would my life be?
The truth is that I would not want to go back and undo my life in the way it would have to be undone had I finished school when I was “supposed to”. I’ve had great successes because I chose to do other things than school. Sure, I may have still had different successes, but I wouldn’t have had those. Life is nothing but an endless list of opportunity costs; when we choose one thing we are automatically choosing to not have or do another thing. This is true in life and it’s true with our health and how we treat our body.
When it comes to health, I had to had to at one point decide that I was going to take the opportunities in front of me as often as possible. I was not going to let Fibro or Migraines (or whatever health issue was plaguing me) take away opportunities. Rather, I reach out for them, if my body fights back, so be it. But, I’m not going to put opportunities aside for the fear of what my body might do, when there’s no way of knowing; and that goes for school, it goes for awesome vacations, it goes for whatever may come up in life.
Last week we had an awesome vacation in Mexico. We were supposed to take this vacation in January but had to cancel because my body attacked. The funny thing is that if we’d gone in January it would have been a very different trip. I probably would have enjoyed it but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much, or taken the opportunites that we were able to take. Instead of just sitting for a few days at a resort in Cancun, we were able to rent a car and drive around the Yucatan, seeing the Mayan ruins (something that has been on my bucket list for years). I couldn’t imagine going to Mexico and not seeing the ruins, but we likely would have done it. Or, we would have joined a tour and had limited time to view them, while being crowded by many other people. Instead, we were able to take our time and really enjoy the sites and each other. I can happily say that it was the best vacation ever, and it was worth every bit of energy that I extended. Things happen for a reason.
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