I think I can, I think I can

I've always been told that life doesn't offer you second chances. You take what you get and run with it, that's it, that's all.

When I was a kid I used to think I could control my environment with my mind - I just had to want it enough. I'll give you an example, if I had just done a test and I knew I got something wrong. I had the power to will the wrong answer away. If I thought about it hard enough, if I wanted it enough, if I prayed hard enough, or even made a deal with God, or the world... I could change that wrong answer. Now, I know, you're wondering how I could do that. Allow me to explain. If I did all the above then there were a few options:

1 – The past would change and in the moment of writing the answer down, my brain would have thought of the "right" one, instead of the one I initially put down. OR

2 – The teacher would look at the answer I initially wrote down and she would "misinterpret" it *cough cough* to be the correct one. OR

3 – This one was rarely used because it would mean that the act would influence Many more people apart from myself and the teacher... the worldly answer to said question would change to match the answer I wrote down. Et voila! Mine would be marked correct and I would get a better grade on the test (but sadly, many people would get it wrong in the process, so you see, this method wasn’t used as often as it hindered the academic advancement of too many people).

Now I know this sounds ludicrous, if not borderline unstable. But when I was about 7, this made sense and I used the concept constantly! haha. It didn't always work, but as you can see, I've been utilising cognitive dissonance mechanisms since before I could spell the term! Haha But now I'm a grown up, with grown up concepts...right?

My dad has always explained to my brother and I, how the idea of forgiveness worked. I’ve been taught that [through our religion] we can by doing certain things, ask for forgiveness of our sins. Whether they are forgiven or not is dependent on many things, but there is a method nonetheless. But there is also a very interesting idea behind it all....
“Who can truly forgive you?”  my dad asks .
”The person you have wronged" and only that person.
Why is it that when someone has passed, the family asks the congregation to offer their forgiveness for anything s/he has done to hurt anyone intentionally or unintentionally? Because that forgiveness has to come from the people who were affected.

So, it's not a cognitive force that changes things around me and makes them alright - contrary to my childhood belief. Once when my brother got into trouble for something I had done, I was too embarrassed to fess up, so I thought long and hard for days, hoping that somehow my brother would magically understand that I was sorry. That the world would correct itself and he wouldn't feel bad for being punished. I thought that the fact that I felt bad would translate through the airwaves, that if the world knew, then he would also eventually know.... but it doesn't really work that way does it?

The world doesn't forgive you, the cosmos don't forgive you, people forgive you. And I recently came to understand that better. You can only wish and hope so much, you can only feel "I'm sorry" so much, you can only project it through the airwaves surrounding you So Much... but if it doesn’t travel and translate, the person isn't getting the message. Maybe my brother still doesn't know how bad I felt that he got in trouble instead of me...

Like I said, we're always told the world doesn't offer second chances. It doesn't. But sometimes, people do. And a second chance is a responsibility - a personal and an external one. And it's what you do after it's offered that is telling.