Wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be grand and wonderful, wouldn’t it be lovely, if you and I had been granted… two lives, the first an experimental existence. We could make mistakes—all the mistakes we want, going this way, going that, exploring, trying and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. We would then correct our mistakes in our second life, our REAL life. Then you could become the person you were always meant to be, the real you, THE TRUE PERSON.
We have but one life, but this one life can be changed in an instant. It can become two lives. The life before the changes and the life after them. We are perfectly free to start fresh at will on a new course, a more fruitful course, a better course any moment we wish, putting aside disappointments, discouragements, false starts, and failures.
To make such changes what will we need?
To start fresh we must have new information, new insights, new skills, and new inspirations.
David J. Rogers
Author of Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life
© 2014 David J. Rogers
davidjrogersftw 
David – I enjoyed this, and I write about diverse things in life too! Your observation here is so true, before and after life events.
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Vicki, I looked at your blog and I can understand better now where you’re coming from. Thanks for taking the time to reach me and let’s stay in touch.
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I agree with you. Having two lives would be awesome. I would not have wasted my twenties with so much unnecessary fear, doubt, self-consciousness and submissiveness. Luckily, the birth of my daughter lead to the shedding of those shells of restraint. I’m still a work in progress, but if I had the second life to correct all the mistakes, I would be so much further along right now. Regardless, I strive to make the most of it all.
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Sidra, we’re alike. I pretty much wasted a decade or two. But I have two lives too and have made up time. I should say you’re a work in progress–so productive now as though during those years of restraint you were building up energy for later use, maturing as a writer, good things on the horizon. I wish you the very best in your writing career and hope to see you make great bounding leaps in creative progress.
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One can have a second life without any regret, without having to correct past mistakes or to catch up missed opportunities. Suppose that you have two very different passions, for example science and poetry. You decide to first devote yourself to one of the two, say, the one that pays best (science in this example). Having lived it and earned a comfortable livelihood through it, you feel satiated and decide that it is time to turn to your second passion. So you reduce first your past activities, then abandon them, you forget the career built upon them; you change your habits, your way of life and your way of thinking. You progressively become a new person as you deepen your commitment to that new life.
On the other hand, there can be missed opportunities for which there is no second life. Some possibilities are open only to youth, in particular all things requiring a young body; when you are old it is too late to catch them. There are also some very special opportunities (generally depending on the global situation) that behave like comets: they come quickly and stay for a short time, then go away for dozens of years; if you miss them, you might not live long enough to see their return.
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Hello Christian. Thank you for your thoughtful comment. You’re describing the kind of life you may have lived to date, one that matches your psychology, perhaps–sensible, orderly, rational: you try something, succeed, and then go on to something else that’s appealing. Very neat, very tidy, logical, dispassionate, not messy at all.
But many people–most I think–many people in the arts certainly–do not lead such A-leads-smoothly-to-B-leads-to-C-leads-to-D kinds of existences, but muddle through, making many mistakes, going off on tangents, doubling back, getting lost from time to time, having regrets, needing to change the whole course of their lives radically at some point if they hope to find fulfillment at last–a messier, more chaotic existence that is very common, full of tragedy, full of emotion, full of excitement.
Of course you’re right; there are missed opportunities that can never be rectified; however, outside of those limitations, opportunities abound for life changes.
Have a good week.
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Dear David
your book fighting to win was a great book
did anyone tranlste it to German, French or Arabic ?
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Thank you, Iyas. I’m glad you liked Fighting to Win. When it was first published it was translated into Japanese and into Swedish. Many years later there was a second Japanese translation. I have heard that it was widely read in Turkey, so perhaps there was an unauthorized Turkish translation. I’m curious as to why you ask.
Thank you for your interest in my writing.
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