Bad Decisions and Good Conseqences
We've been talking a lot about school recently here at HerKentucky. We've discussed selecting the right schools for our kids and for ourselves. We've talked about making the right decision during sorority rush. In a way, we've focused on the best decisions of our school experiences.
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| Holly's book is great. Even Oprah thinks so. |
But, for every really good decision, there's a really bad one. Today, on Salon.com, Kentucky-born author Holly Goddard Jones talks about her decision to get married as a nineteen year-old University of Kentucky sophomore. There were no shotguns involved, nor rebellion. Instead, Ms. Jones tells us, she was following her boyfriend to Lexington and she didn't want to let her daddy down by "living in sin." It was a tough decision, she notes, and one which left her socially isolated on campus. Now, Ms. Jones argues on her thirteenth wedding anniversary, it ultimately turned out to be a great decision both personally and professionally. Her "biggest mistake" didn't turn out so bad.
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ms. Jones for Ace Weekly. From that experience, I can tell you that her commitment to hard work, good storytelling, and generally being a lovely person shines through, as does her adoration of her husband. To hear that her "bad decision" turned out to be a blessing certainly warms my heart. It's certainly a story that resonates with a lot of small-town Southern girls: making the difficult choice in order to fulfill family expectations.
In her Salon piece, Ms. Jones wistfully notes:
I would be lying, of course, if I claimed that I have not had moments of
depression and doubt over the years, wondering about the course of that
parallel me, the one who did not get married. I wonder who I would have
become if my roots weren’t planted so closely to my husband’s, so that
the two of us have grown not just up but together, into an
interdependent being with the same home and habits, many of the same
memories and broad life goals, the same jokes and turns of phrase.
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| I question this undergrad hairstyle. |
I think we've all been there. Every decision we make from the ages of 18-25 holds consequences for every subsequent day of our lives. Most of us have wondered if things would have been a little different if we'd chosen a different path, yet we don't want to negate the good consequences of the paths we took. What if I'd finished that application to Yale? I often ask myself, then realize that I wouldn't have met my beau or many of my besties. What if I'd chosen a different field of study or moved to New York, like I always dreamed? Like Ms. Jones, I ultimately decide that, had I done any of these things, I just wouldn't be me.
We'd love to hear from y'all. Have you ever made "bad decisions" that turned out to be great ones?
