if you knew then what you know now.. what would you do?

What would be different? Would you change anything if you could? How would it have affected your life?

Flowing on from last week’s post about how sometimes what comes to light isn’t always what we hoped for or expected, but the potential for it always existed… and sometimes what comes to light is knowledge or information that “would have made a huge difference” in our lives had we known it sooner.

What comes to mind for you?

‘If I had known x when I was younger, I would’ve …’ or ‘if I knew x back when I was 15, I wouldn’t have ….’

Surely you’ve had these thoughts creep in and confiscate some of that mental real estate at some point?! Or just me… cool, cool, cool…. this is a safe space, so I’ll share lol I indulge in these thoughts from time to time, the “shoulda-coulda-woulda’s and what if’s” but almost exclusively. when I’m tired or overwhelmed.. so not when everything’s on point and I’m keeping myself in check, doing the things I need to do to keep well.

Here’s a perspective for ya,

if we were meant to know the things at an earlier stage in our life — we would have. Simple !! Like the whanaunga, Buddha says, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” If we were meant to know things earlier in our lives, the opportunities to receive it would have found us. Anyway…

Coming back to our own kōrero (stories), it might do us well to remember there are 140ish phases of each creation stage, Te Kore > Te Pō > Te Ao Mārama. So 400+ and I’m sure some of them have “the beauty of hindsight” in there somewhere haha I’d like to think so anyway. Because that’s exactly it!

We only know what we know until we learn something new.

Til someone tells us, teaches us, we observe it, experiment with it or experience it. Then it’s not until after the fact that we see how useful such information or wisdom could have been at other moments in our lives.

Oh well. Haha and I say that with love, I promise, hear me out.

A seed remains a seed until it breaks open, roots come out of it and it reaches for the light above the surface to become something totally different. From there it continues to grow a trunk, and branches and leaves until one day it produces a berry that kererū and other birds might like to eat. It has stages and phases it must complete before evolving to the next; there are different phases for different phases.

What would you have done with the knowledge if you knew it earlier?

Would you have the capacity for it? The maturity? The resilience or the humility to be responsible with it?

We could reframe these questions as well, to explore what our responsibility is with the knowledge, information and wisdom we’ve added to our kete (baskets) so far and that we’re yet to add — what is our responsibility to ensure the generations coming through have every opportunity to add to the kete, rather than start from scratch? Maybe that’s one of the reasons why we didn’t know everything already when we arrived earth-side lol

Not knowing something and seeking it out, not having certain things probably helped cultivate determination, resolve, stubbornness, resilience, courage, compassion and a whole lot of other things in order to make it a reality. The journey shaped who, where and what you are today — so if you knew it already, and you missed out on that part of the journey, would you really be you?

To wrap up, I found the full version of one of my favourite, favourite, faaavourite quotes:

“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.”

— Al-Shafi'i

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.