Shake It Up?

You would have to be living in a cave not to know we are in the mist of an election year. The mud slinging is fast and furious and coming from all sides. This blog does not venture into politics as a topic, but I had to say something about all the talk this week regarding Romney's staffer who said his campaign was like an Etch A Sketch...."just shake it up and start all over again".
Now, I for one, LOVED my Etch A Sketch as a kid. It was back in the dark ages before computers, hand held games, "Draw Something" on your phone or iPads. We drew my turning two knobs...by hand!!!! Drawing a circle was nearly impossible unless you were an expert Etch A Sketcher.
I am less interested in its drawing abilities and more interested in the notion of "shaking it up and starting all over". It made be pause and wonder how many of us would like a chance or two in our own lives to simply "shake it up and start over". If it were that simple, what would you change? Would you change anything? If we allow ourselves to fantasize, for a moment, that we could easily erase some things in our past, would we dare do it? Maybe you look back on decisions about jobs we did or didn't take, risks we did or didn't take, mates we did or didn't take. Would these decisions have made a difference on where we are today? Would we be any happier or more successful?
For most of us, myself included, once we make a decision, we somehow make the best of it and live with it. We do our best to move forward, grow as a person, use our situations in life to learn more. It can be a painful process, but second guessing our decisions later on down the road doesn't have much value. It usually just causes us undue agony and worry. Of course we all could have taken another path, made another choice, ended up somewhere else. No matter the decision, our own skin follows us in all our choices. We have to love ourselves enough that the decisions we make feel okay regardless of the outcome. We have to love ourselves enough that we can stand up, dust ourselves off, and keep going. We have to love ourselves enough so we can truly love others.
Maybe we can't "shake it up and start over", but we can always be perfecting the picture that is our life.