[eweissenbach]

There are small decisions I might make differently with the wisdom of hindsight, but I would change virtually nothing. First, I would say that regret is the worst kind of wasted energy - it serves no purpose, can change nothing, and leaves you feeling bad. We are the sum of our experiences, good and bad, and to wish anything had been different would affect hundreds of things which happened subsequently.

For example; I wanted to stay in Fargo, N.D. after I resigned my job there seventeen years ago, and sometimes subsequently felt that I didn't try hard enough to find a way to stay. Instead, I took another job with the company I had been with for twelve years in St. Paul, Minnesota. My son Kellen was finishing his sophomore year in high school and was really, not surprisingly, beside himself about the move. We had many, many loooooong talks about the benefits of moving, and embracing change, and maturing, but he was mostly inconsolable. We moved to St. Paul in August and enrolled him in a private Lutheran high school, as we thought he would be able to adjust quicker in a smaller school. He started football practice the week we moved in, and he made several good friends right away (some of whom are still close friends). The first week in school he met Sarah and they started dating three weeks later. Sarah and Kellen have now been married for ten years and in January presented us with our second set of twin grandsons, their first (my daughter's twin boys are 15). Had we not left Fargo at that time Kellen and Sarah would never have met and William and Carson would not exist. I wouldn't change any of that for anything. I am a great beleiver in living in the present and planning for the future - now there is something I CAN positively impact. (Hope this doesn't sound like a lecture Gracie et al - there is no harm in wistfully dreaming how things might have been different as long as you don't wallow in some kind of self-pity or regret.)