Before and after the plunge.. Our personal benchmarks.

We all have ways to measure time and change. We do so by reflecting upon those events, benchmarks, that changed our lives. “The before and after.” We need those to see how we’ve progressed, changed, to get a sense of where we’ve been and where we are at present, what we have achieved and sometimes lost.  A measurement of how far we’ve gone. 

Those benchmarks stay with us because of the enormous emotional impact they had in our lives, affecting its course forever.  I have plenty, which I am grateful for now, as time has faded some of the negative associations linked to them. I am here now, because of every one of those life-changing incidents.

Some of us reflect on time as divided, as after the divorce, after graduating, after quitting the once hated career, and so on. The choices we made, or the choices made for us, caused a “domino effect,” that we could have never prepared for. Yet, we went with the flow and were able to adjust to the unfolding of those events.

I have plenty of benchmarks, some which I dared not go back to and remember, but as time has removed the pain in some instances, now I see the obvious positive lessons. There were losses and gains, and all of them have shaped me, and I want to believe they have made me more resilient and a better person.

Although we cannot change the past, we can recal those benchmarks and should, to try to extract the lesson in each one of them. We should look forward and stay in the present, but looking back is essential to seeing how far we’ve come.