What if?

If I knew then what I know now…would I have done things differently?

I find I am not unique in asking myself this question. In fact, I doubt there is anyone who hasn’t wondered how it could have been “if only.”

Irma Bombeck wrote a piece shortly before she died, “If I had My Life to Live Over,” listing things she would have done differently. In the poem “Warning” Jenny Joseph tells us what she will do when she is old. Under the tracks at the Rockridge BART station in Oakland there is a wall of tiles hand-painted by those who lost all their possessions in the Oakland hills fire. One of them suggests, “Use your best china everyday.”

We can’t change the past. We can’t go back and do it all over again. But, with a little help from those who have been there-done that, we can practice today, before it’s too late.