Among the delusions that arose my pride in my youth was the idea that my life was supposed to be a romantic epic adventure. It was to be romantic in the sense of being exciting, and also in the sense of finding a young woman who would be my "true love", and whom I would marry, and live happily ever after raising a family.
How much misery did I cause myself and others, including more than young unfortunately young woman, upon whom I foisted this notion of my life?
God did not intend for me to live that kind of life. Looking back at the younger me, the idea that I could have been a suitable husband and father for most of the women I courted and dated now strikes me as absurd. In every case it obvious that they would have been better off with someone else, and that is exactly what wound up happening. But to have been aware of this at the time would have been far too much ego deflation on my part. How could I have faced my true nature, as a small man mostly overwhelmed by the world, and so far from being a the provider that being a husband and father would require? Only the experiences of the years and decades have been able to penetrate that coating of pride about myself.
I wonder---under the right direction, could I have been made more away of what I truly was? Could it have been different? Leaving aside such questions as fate, I think it could have been. I was bad information about life, and to my discredit, I believed it all, and gobbled it all up, trying to live every fantasy about what I thought I was supposed to be, or could be, until there was no more possibility of fooling myself.
I am thankful to God for the humiliation of discovering this while I am still alive, and still have a chance to repent of these prideful beliefs about myself. The consequences of this pride remain with me, and always will, even as I know I will be forgiven. It is a way that God has given us to detach ourselves from the things of this world---this pain of the consequence. Maybe I am lucky after all, having made these mistakes.
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