Should I Stay or Should I Go Go Go...
Another reason to beat up the guy who invented the clock...or the hourglass for that matter...

You can't worry about yesterday, cuz it's already gone. You can't worry about tomorrow, cuz it may not come. But you can't exactly live every day like it's your last, cuz it just might not be so.

Jiminey X-mas, I have got entirely too much time for introspection...

Over time, I've gotten obsessed with time, and like I just said, that could just be the result of having too much time to obsess about it. Like that thing about the devil's hands, or idle hands for the devil, or sympathy for the devil, or whatever it was. Anyhow, the point is that I should feel pretty zen as I try to draw on the errors of the past, make sure I exist in the presence, and have some indication of where I want the future to take me. I don't feel that way just yet...but I'm still working on it.

Like regret, that's a tricky one. Everyone's got at least a little bit of some, and some have got it by the compost heap load. I guess it's all in how you handle it. I've got some, but not always on the stuff you would think it would be for. Like I don't have any regrets about anything I should've done for or said to my sister before she died, but I do wish I'd've gotten more out of my college experience in the way of education instead of just chomping at the bit to finally have it all over with. I loved my sister and she new it, but while I've always loved learning, I hated school. That's how it adds up. Go figure.

Anyhow, it's there, and I feel it from time to time. And what draws it out even more, if you're like me and over-analyze the hell out of things, is when you consider it against a framework of what's happening to you now or what's comin' down the pipe. Now, that all depends on how you feel about stuff like predestination or free will: Did you do it, or was it decided for you?

Some people like the destiny idea, haha, especially when everything's working out for them. "I always knew that I'd be standing here one day holding this award." I'm sure that's glossing it up some, icing over the doubts of the past, but at that moment, that's probably exactly how it feels. On the flip side, no one likes to look at the homeless guy or the homicidal maniac and think "Hey, that's what I'm destined for!" And if they do, well, perhaps they should already be in the padded cell.

I know I'm oversimplifying. Some people do feel that some of the bad things, the really bad things they chose to do in their lives were out of necessity. They feel they had no choice other than the one they followed. Maybe that's true.

Others, of course, feel like you live your life, make your choices, and you get to whatever end the path you chose took you down. Definitely seems a whole lot more grounded, and when you dig into someone's path, you do sometimes find that the choices they made did, in fact, get them where they are now. Kind of a direct cause and effect type thing: You drink a gallon of gin every day, you probably will become an alky who wakes up in gutters.

Now, like I said, it's probably a whole lot easier on the mind to trace your steps and see the causes and effects of your decisions and their outcomes. But then there's them little moments of serendipity where things just lined up and worked in your favor. You got what you prayed/wished/hoped for against staggering odds. Well, how do you explain those if everything else is the rational result of your choices?

If we keep going down this path, we open up a whole slew of other possibilities with things like luck vs. probability. I'm sure that if you got enough mathematicians, statisticians, and computers to run theoretical probability of most anything...well, the math could probably figure out exactly what the odds are of whatever happened to you happening to you. Those answers though, may still be too wild to accept completely without considering some unquantifiable outside source...(Note: I haven't even brought God/Buddha/Zeus/Gaia/That Spaghetti Monster Thing into this...we'd be here all day.)

After all, haven't you met people who things always seem to come through for (the lucky), those who always have things tank (the unlucky) in and amongst the either/or majority? And it's always made me wonder (and a few other people, I might add) on whether it's possible to reverse that polarity: lucky to unlucky, or vice versa? And that brings us back to the whole destiny/choice thing: Are you destined to be lucky? Are you destined to have your luck run out? Or are you lucky as long as you keep making the right choices, and it falls off sharply once you start making wrong ones?

That's assuming there even is luck, destiny, or any of the above.

I think if you've gotten to this point, you'll realize that I've given this a whole lot of thought. Also, in case you'd like any conclusions on all of the above...well, you're luck either changed to the bad, or you're unlucky streak is about to continue...and/or you were destined for disappointment...or the choice you made to read this set you up to be let down....because the sad fact of the matter is, I haven't come to any conclusions about this. Like I said, I just think about it too much.

Anyhow, I am running some clinical tests on it all. Not scientific tests, I've only got me, so there's no control group. I've set up some time limits on destiny, and we're going to see where my luck and choices will take me. Otherwise, this time next year I may have relocated to work out some regrets both new and old.

Cheers.

(postscipt: I am a sixth of the way through my fiction experiment. If you haven't already, check it out at http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com )