Rich pickings.

How do we reconcile the events in our lives, the successes and the missed opportunities. Still more, how do we reconcile the opportunity of what we could have been and what we actually achieved in our mental appreciation of all we have seen and yet not seen, soon enough !
 Given we are all born equal, take a chromosome here or there and the heavy influence that environment plays, throw in some national temperament and gender issues, then born the same has a somewhat hollow ring. But having accepted  all that, did we in any way get close to reaching our potential, a potential seen through yet another prism !
 To question, what if I had done this or that, can lead to a great deal of disillusionment since the question is loaded with the contra option, I did something else, something which one is able to judge and analyse unlike the "what if" scenario.
One never knows the outcome of any action and even the actions that led you to be where you are today were taken at the time with ones best interests at heart, it was what you wanted to do at the time.
So is reflection bad and should we count our blessings and terminate the debate. I think not.
 Rather it should be a continuous debate, one we carry with us throughout our lives since if we are to evolve and hopefully better ourselves then we have to practice some sort of ongoing modification, based on self analysis.
 We mustn't shirk from hard truths since our strength lies in understanding how we became what we became and having acknowledged the journey we should celebrate the diversity.
 The diversity of all our journeys, of all our complications, of all the outcomes, since there are so many rich pickings to mull over in our dotage.