Young and All Around Stupid

Mirroring off a friend of mine's blog, I am a strong believer in fate. Timing, circumstance, kairos (there's a $50,000 a year word!), all of it. I think we are meant to discover certain things, learn certain ideas and feel certain emotions. I think we get choice in how we interpret our fate. How we choose to let these crucial moments play a part in our lives. I always say that people should never let "life happen to them", and when I say that I mean never let fate get the best of you. Try, interpret, learn and be happy. Make mistakes.

I went home this weekend and had some heart to hearts with some people I'm close with here. One of them was telling me about how she is back with her boyfriend on a "friends with benefits" type level. Mind you an ex-boyfriend who her whole family/friend group hates immensely, and who caused her much more emotional pain than I had ever seen her in. We were all so happy when she had finally gotten the courage to end it with him, and told her she was better off. And here she is now, still entertaining the idea of him, still making the mistake. She even said that to me. "Let me make my own mistakes. I know it is, but I'm okay with that. I'm the one who has to live with it at the end of the day."

Forget my views on friends with benefits for the moment. Different post for a different day. But what about her "let me make my own mistakes" outlook? I know I have shared those views before. Stayed in relationships I knew were wrong, dated people my friends and family could not stand, had summer flings that would never really make me happy- and I just viewed it as me being young and stupid. I saw it as me making a mistake, experiencing something new, getting burned, but gaining experience.

The key is I don't know if I can really sit here and say these bad decisions bettered me. I don't know if I could say I learned a valuable lesson and the older I get, the less willing I am to screw shit up. I don't think I regret any of it though. Making spontaneous and stupid is just part of who I am- and I know it's part of who my friend is. We're just like that. It's possible these mistakes just help us hone just how spontaneous and stupid we can be, and what we can get away with. We're testing the limits of ourselves- we're just doing it through a relationship.

So that is what I mean. It's not about the experiences themselves, but what you take out of them. Whether you choose to better yourself as a person, teach yourself a lesson, or just continue to be young and stupid. I think I'll choose option C for a while.