Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Beth and I had dinner last night at a local steak house. Primal paleoish. We sat at the bar next to an older couple who are regulars. I dunno why, but on the way home while thinking about how this 58 years of marriage couple ended up as regulars it came to me how few truly major inflection points there have been in my adult life.

You know, points where you will make a decision because everything has brought you to a place where you must do so, and what comes downstream will change because of that decision. Inflection points to me are somewhat less obvious than Frost’s “fork in the road”, and sometimes they are only visible in the rear view mirror. At the time you may not even be aware that you were there, or that you were making a decision. Indeed, sometimes the decision is to do nothing, to stay the course. After all, choosing not to act is a choice, too.

For me each of these inflection points has a commonality, at least insofar as outcome. As I look back the direction I chose at each of these very few points lead me to become some better version of the man I could be. Simple, yet not. Self-congratulatory perhaps, but there was loss involved in each decision, too. It’s only in the review that I can balance the gain agains the loss and see the net. It’s in that review, however, that the threads come together and where the possible lesson going forward may lie, for I will surely be faced with one or more of these inflection points should I be fortunate enough to survive a while longer. Thinking back, without knowing I was doing so, I always chose to be more rather than to have more.

Think back a bit and look for the inflection points in your life thus far. Which major ones brought you here? Is there a pattern to your choices? When you come to the next point should you hold true to that pattern, or should you learn from those prior inflection points and alter your pattern?