Paths

Do you ever wonder about the path that you did not take? Do you have regrets about not doing something or doing something that you are now having second thoughts about?

I guess what has prompted this latest bout of ennui is running into old friends on the Internet. I ended up searching for one thing and found a really good friend's name from nursing school. I may have written about her before. We were in nursing school together, I quit, she kept going and now she has a Masters in Nursing and is a nursing instructor at a school in our neck of the woods in Soutwestern Pennsylvania. I often wonder if I hadn't quit school and chosen a different path would I perhaps be a nursing instructor, maybe a cruise ship nurse or maybe Nurses Without Borders?

RDS was so supportive when I quit. When everyone was asking me my future plans and my response was, "I'm going to go to my fantasy place, Alaska, and work on the Alaskan Pipeline." Like my parents were ever going to go for that. RD made me see sense. RDS thought I was nuts, but she didn't totally poo-poo the idea. She was more supportive with my mom's grand scheme to get me to the "nunnery". Not really a nunnery. An all-female, Catholic college. Of course, I was furious, but RDS made me think that this was possibly something I could live with. And to give both her and my mom their props, it turned out to be the best decision I ever made.

But, I still wonder.

RD, I am so proud of you. You were such a good friend to me then, and I am so proud of you now for following your dream. Good going girlfriend!!!!!

“Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.” Henry David Thoreau