Reply to What you wish you knew at 40

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wish I had had a clearer sense of how so much of what happens to you in life seems to be almost random.  I believed that if I worked hard at being a parent, my kids would be successful, and they would like me and we would have a great family.  If I worked hard at marriage, I could have a great marriage.

But now that I am nearly sixty, I look around and there's not a lot of evidence that input equals output.  I know two great moms who have kids that are in jail as a result of either bad decisions or mental illness.  I know someone whose family was involved in a big messy criminal scandal that made all the newspapers and she was publicly humiliated and lost everything she had worked for overnight.

I know two husbands that went to jail -- mostly due to greediness that led them to make bad decisions like embezzling from work.  And I'm an UMC educated lady who lives in the suburbs!

I know people whose marriages broke apart because they got bored or lonely or whatever.  I know people who seemed to spend all their time driving car pools and their kids have dropped out of college and are spending their twenties living at home and playing basketball in their parents driveways.

And I know people who were really laid back and didn't push their kids and their kids are great and they have great families and everyone loves everyone else.  And I'm realizing that maybe I just have bad instincts and tend to overestimate or underestimate people.  Or maybe life just really is random. If you had asked me when I was in my forties which moms were doing a great job, and who was likely to be successful, etc.  all of my predictions would turn out to be wrong, including the predictions I made about my own life.

Knowing this, I'm not sure what I would have done differently.  maybe gotten a little more rest and cooled it a bit with the math work sheets.  not really sure.[/quote]

So true, this- the part about input not equalling output., and the need to accept this reality- it's a fact of life. [/quote]

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