It's the end of my workday. No one MADE me do this. It's the kind of thing only a real dunce would do:I googled an old boyfriend. Found a photo of him ... and his wife ... celebrating their 8th wedding anniversary. The photo was taken by their 4-year-old son.
I never really loved him. When I think back on our relationship (and, to be honest, I don't do it often), I'm not even sure we liked each other. I suspect we were just highly compatible sexually, he was lonely, and I was ruled by Baby Lust.
So why did I look him up? Bored, I guess. Why did this send me into an emotional tailspin? Because at times I wish I'd had a more conventional life. Not with him, necessarily, but with someone I really loved, someone I could nurture and protect, just as he would nurture and protect me, in an uncaring world. (That's the way Time magazine recently described marriage and I thought it was lovely.)
But, as Elizabeth Edwards discusses in her wonderful book Resilience, we have to be in the present and live the life we have NOW. That perfect life we remember probably wasn't that perfect and besides, it's gone … and it's stupid to waste today by longing for yesterday or "what might have been."
So I will take off my dunce cap, dust myself off, and head for home and try to appreciate the blessings in the life I have.
