If I Could Reconsider My Way of Life!

The Woman's Magazine put the following question to its readers: If it were granted me to reconsider the path of my life, what new path would I choose for myself?

The magazine received many answers from its readers, in which they agreed that they had chosen the best ways in their lives and had no ambition to exchange them for others, despite the many difficulties that sometimes beset those ways.

Some of the letters carried answers from mothers and housewives, all of them saying: I would not exchange my present pattern of life for any other.

Among those letters was one from a girl who had devoted her life to the service of her aged parents, until the day came when she found herself alone, not having prepared herself for paid work, and fortune had not favored her with marriage. This girl said: I ought to have gone out into life and prepared myself for work, but I loved my parents, and I am truly happy to have devoted the years of my youth to their service, without regret for those years. Indeed, were it granted my parents to come back to life again, I would not hesitate a single moment to take the very same path I took — neglecting my own interests and attending to my parents.

Another said: I wasted my time before God blessed me with my children; then I gave myself over to their service. Now that these children have grown up and become independent, no work remains for me at home except cooking and mending. So if it were granted me to choose again what I aspire to in my life, it would be to organize my time better and to renew my interest in the musical culture I neglected in my youth!

A third said: What is beyond all doubt is that I would again choose my husband, my three children, and the happy home — only I would find in them more pleasure and happiness than before. At my marriage I was captive to an idea, namely that something bad was going to happen in my married life; but that something never happened at all... I poisoned my years of happiness with my own hands, especially when my children were in the years of their childhood... I kept thinking that this family happiness of mine would not last long. That is the folly I committed in the past. Now life has taught me that we can find the strength needed to face the problems that befall us — problems most of us fail to face, because we are absorbed in thinking of the disasters that await us.

The magazine commented on this remark, saying: Would that we could print this piece of wisdom in letters of gold on little cards and send them to every bride on the morning of her wedding, so that, reading it every day and acting according to it, she would count it the most precious gift she received at her wedding celebration.