Choices....

I consider myself a pretty successful person in life---so far anyway. I think I've made some pretty good choices that got me where I am. I got a college education. Married a really great man. Have 5 adorable kids. I recognize the fact that I am who I am because of the way I was raised. My parents taught me strong values from the time I was little, and because of that I had pretty high standards set for myself. And I still do. I always try to do what I believe to be the right thing. Lately I've been encountering people from my past on facebook. And also blogger. It's weird to see people I knew in Jr. high all grown up with their own families. It's made me think about how choices really do affect the outcome of our lives. As I've grown into myself with age, I realize that I led a pretty sheltered life. I only knew what was in front of my face and took it all for granted. Thinking how lame it was that a certain boy in my history class never showed up to our group project meetings because he had to work. I wanted to fail him (we graded each other), but the group decided to give him at least a C because he did what he could in class. In retrospect I see that I had absolutely no idea what his home life was. Maybe he was working because he had to financially support himself and if he missed work he'd lose his job and it would cause an avalanche of problems as a result. I actually think this might have been the case. I remember another boy that was in most of my classes. He was a pretty smart guy. He was very closed lipped about his home life, but from the bits and pieces I got I gathered that he lived with a single mom who had severe emotional issues. I, however, treated him like he was living the life I was. I have recently discovered that he has become successful in this life, just as I have. He has a great job, a dedicated wife, and a few kids. He seems really happy. Both of our outcomes are the same. A lot of the choices we made to get to our outcomes were also the same. But, how is it that we made the same choices when our upbringings were so drastically different? I wonder if I would still be the same person I am today if I had been raised by an emotionally disturbed mother, or an abusive father. Would I have been able to make the choices I did? He did. I can only hope that I would have been able to overcome a hard upbringing. I guess I'll never know what I would have turned out like. And I'm glad I won't. I do know that I want my own children to realize how good they have it. I want them to know that life does exist outside of the 2x2 square around their own heads. A lot of people don't have it as good as they do. Most people don't have it as easy as they do. I want to teach them to be understanding of others situations, and sympathetic to them. Not to be as ignorant as I was. And maybe that just comes with being a teenager. Ignorance that is. And selfishness. And thinking everyone should be able to do what you do because every one's life is the same. I would love for my teenagers to see then what I waited until now to be able to see. Maybe that kind of thinking is me being ignorant. But I think it's worth a shot.