Sometimes I Wonder…

Yesterday, quite by accident, I met a former student and her mother coming out of a store here in town. I thought the mom looked familiar and when I saw the Oklahoma car tag, I asked if they were from Tahlequah. “Yes,” she answered. I told her my name and asked if she had a little girl in my classroom. Well, that little girl was with her, driving the car, grown into a lovely adult,  and I would never have recognized this young woman as the child I taught so many years ago. What did I teach her? How does she remember me? Sometimes, I wonder…

If I had chosen a different vocation, been published sooner than I was, chosen one path instead of another, spoken out, kept quiet, toiled uphill instead of coasting down, been more courageous, what would have been the results? Sometimes, I wonder…

Life is full of “what ifs” and “if onlys” and sometimes I’m sure we all wonder…about a lot of things. Opportunities come and go. An opportunity not taken may become the door to another possibility. I can only hope and pray that something I have taught or written or experienced has blessed the life of another, in some way, great or small. I have heard people say that if they had life to live again, they wouldn’t do anything differently. This amazes me. My question is, “Didn’t you learn anything the first time around? ”  I think wisdom comes from experience, it’s what we do with all that knowledge we gain through the years. So, if I had made different choices and decisions, would the outcome have been the same? Sometimes I wonder…

Opportunity

They do me wrong who say I come no more

When once I knock and fail to find you in;

For every day I stand outside your door,

And bid you wake, and rise, and fight and win.

Wail not, for precious chances passed away,

Wail not for golden ages on the wane!

Each night I burn the records of that day;

And at sunrise every soul is born again.

–Walter Malone