Second Chances

For as long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed history. I think that it is important to understand where we have come from so we can know where to go in the future.

Maybe the greatest capability of mankind is the ability to learn and to grow, and we do that for the most part by trying, and failing, and trying, and failing, until we learn from our mistakes and develop the ability to accomplish that which we are trying to do. In other words, we are learning from the history we create. And following that thought, the study of history is simply learning from mistakes made by others…

I remember talking once with someone who had the opinion that where we can learn from history, we can not go back and fix the past.

But maybe, on some occasions, we can do just that by making changes in the here and now.

A few weeks ago I went back to where I grew up as the annual Fall Festival was happening. An old friend accompanied me as we were going to meet up with yet another old friend for the occasion. I also happened to find out once I was down in the area that someone else very special to me from the past was single again and I knew that I needed to get in touch with her. As it happened, or maybe as it was designed, we ran into each other at the Festival.

She and I had only spoken briefly twice over the past eighteen plus years, and both times we were involved with someone else. There were issues that needed to be discussed from all those years ago, mostly on my part, as I had caused her a lot of hurt in the past.

However, over the years, I also knew that I had never lost my love for her. I was totally surprised during the course of the conversation to find out that she held similar feelings to my own in spite of everything, and in spite of all the time that had passed.

Since that night we have spoken daily, and at length, on the phone and in e-mail. The opportunity to reconnect has been quite marvelous and I know we are both surprised at how open and comfortable we are with each other after all of time we have spent apart. We are looking forward to all of the phenomenal possibilities that the future might hold in store for us both.

But how does this fix the mistake made in the past? Because this very special person was once my wife, and I feel (as does she) that, where our separation may have been necessary in order for us both to grow up and become the adults we are today, it was still a mistake for us to divorce and now we have the possibility of correcting that mistake and rewriting a future together.