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Friday Sept. 1, 2017


When we were children, parents taught us that while we could have anything we wanted in the world/in life, we couldn’t have everything.

Taught us to make choices – snack time vs. nap time, bedtime vs. TV time, blue popsicle s. red, and so on.

We taught our children those lessons, perhaps with increased emphasis on ‘you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it’, and largely similar lessons about choice making.

Later in life choice making becomes wider, yet the ‘you can do anything’ part becomes narrower. It doesn’t need to be, but most people see it that way.

My largest challenge each time I tweak a few minutes of my day, adding something, invariably something important falls off the table. I don’t like that. Still, if I made a list of all those things I ‘wish to keep as habit’ and all those things I ‘want to make habits’, together with required time for eating, sleeping, exercising, socializing, I’ll need a 30 hour day.

Something has to move from the ‘daily’ list to ‘three times a week’ list, something needs to move from the ‘want to do’ list to the ‘trash heap’ list. My day is like an apple. Each activity removed carves off some like a paring knife – leaving only my core.

Great word, core.

Core of an apple, core of my being.

Apple’s core is easy to hold, to appreciate – a skeletal structure, contains seeds that could grow.

Is my core like that?

Can mine be held up? An intellectual construct, skeleton I can deflate or make strong, structured and full of shape, with heft?

Reader feedback:

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

This is definitely something I can relate to, learned late but lesson learned. Its never too late to begin again and start setting your own rules to the path you choose, VF, Calgary, AB


This is food for thought, HA, Mississauga, ON

Hello Mark, I enjoyed reading today’s musings, Mistaken Identity. In fact, I posted it on Facebook (see the attached screenshot), but I didn’t know how to link it to you, other than to link to your website (which I did). Your message resonates with me, as a woman “of a certain age” who is perhaps questioning whether I have spent my precious time on the right things, or on being the person I want to be. It's a tough one, however, because on the other hand, if we want to have people in our lives, then we invariably have to make compromises. I guess the question comes down to, what and how much does one compromise before one starts sacrificing one's self (one's identity) too much? Thank you for the thought provocation!, DAB, Edmonton, AB

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Thanks for reading. I appreciate feedback, pro and con, and suggestions to help improve this column and this website are always welcomed - usually published the following day under COMMENTS RECEIVED.
 
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