OMA
I WAS
WRONG
I thought I knew.
I thought I knew what my life would become.
Who would stay.
Who would leave.
I thought I knew what love was.
What loneliness felt like.
When to stay and when to leave.
I thought I understood people.
And perhaps most of all, I thought I knew myself.
I was wrong.
KEEP WALKING →There is nothing to be ashamed of in that.
Quite the opposite.
Life would be rather small if, in our fifties, we thought exactly as we did in our twenties.
We love. We are disappointed. We lose. We find.
We make decisions we think are final, and meet people who were supposed to stay only briefly but end up changing everything.
Sometimes the opposite happens.
The person we thought would walk beside us to the end takes a different direction.
And once again, we have to look at the world anew.
PERHAPS
Being wrong
does not mean failing.
Perhaps it means we have learned something.
That we dared to look at our own truth and say:
I no longer think that way.
Sometimes that takes more courage than defending an old opinion to the very end.
THINGS I WAS CERTAIN ABOUT
I thought that...
This is a place for the ideas that life nudged out of position.
ABOUT LOVE
...love is always enough.
I thought that if two people loved each other enough, everything else would work itself out.
Love also needs safety, actions, time, conversation and the willingness to choose each other again and again.
ABOUT BEING ALONE
...being alone means being lonely.
I thought a whole life always needed someone beside you.
You can be at peace, strong and whole on your own. And still long for another person.
ABOUT STRENGTH
...strong people should cope on their own.
I thought asking for help meant I was not as strong as I had imagined.
Sometimes the strongest thing you can say is: I cannot carry this alone.
ABOUT SEPARATION
...you should move on quickly after a separation.
I imagined healing as a journey you could complete properly and put behind you.
The heart does not read a calendar. Some things we learn to live with differently, rather than simply getting over them.
ABOUT THE RIGHT PERSON
...everything should be easy with the right person.
I thought difficulties meant there was something wrong with us.
Even good love has to learn, talk, repair and grow.
ABOUT TIME
...I would have time to say it later.
It was easy to leave gratitude, apologies, longing and the most important words until tomorrow.
Sometimes later never comes. Some words are worth saying while the other person is still here to hear them.
I was wrong.
And that is a good thing.
YOUR TURN
What about you?
What were you once absolutely certain of?
What did life teach you only later?
Where can you look kindly at your former self today and say:
I understand why you thought that.
But you were wrong.
Perhaps, in that moment, we lose nothing of ourselves.
Perhaps we grow a little.
You do not have to regret everything in your past.
Sometimes it is enough to understand it better today.
I was wrong.
And life went on.