When we are young, we receive guidance from parents, some terrific, some miserable, and much in the middle. None of our guardians is ideal, but they are the ones who point to what they believe is the best way. No college degree is required to take on the joy and effort, the teeth grinding and worry, smiles and embraces of an unpaid position lasting two decades, give or take.

It is a noble and essential profession if there ever was one.

As growing children, we engage with the world and find out about it and ourselves. We make mistakes, some of which suggest a different way forward. We recognize lessons and misunderstand or ignore others, but we have the time to make errors and revise our character, insight, and plans.

Youth is on our side.

Inevitably, as adults, we sometimes fall short. Nor do all the best early life decisions suit us as we age because we are different in a way we never predicted. That’s one of the tricky things about life. As Soren Kirkegaard said,

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Jaques tells us much in a few words:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts.

Many parts, indeed. Jaques follows with a description of seven periods of a long life.

After infancy comes the childhood of a schoolboy who would rather play than walk to school. When he grows and becomes a lover, he “sighs like a furnace.” Such is the wonder and complexity of young love.

His next role is soldier, followed by middle age and the inevitable decline of his body. The winter of the fellow’s existence closes the book.

Shakespeare’s description is intended, at least in part, to be amusing and ironic.

Many scholars have attempted to describe and name the various periods of our residency on the planet, though women were not always studied until recently.

Psychologist Daniel Levinson offered his own ideas about life’s stages at the end of the last century. One portion of his work focused on middle age, when gentlemen reconsider their commitments, sometimes making dramatic life changes.

Past their physical prime, some divorce, seek new careers, try to recapture their youth and virility, and hope to fill in the hollowness inside. They seek meaning in response to doubt over whether they chose the best path on a journey at least half over.

As you have doubtless concluded, this period may generate a midlife crisis.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that we change if given enough years. Our body produces new cells and disposes of others over seven to ten years. The life of neutrophil-type blood cells might last a couple of days, while some cells in our eyes are with us from the beginning to the end.

Regret is one of the problems of a life that can only be lived once. Many forks in the road confront us. When we choose one way to travel at a crossroads, the alternative often causes us to think we made a mistake.

Suppose I had gone the other direction, our internal voice asks us. This is because the alternative road, never having been visited, can live in our imagination as better, if not perfect.

Of course, in the real world, nothing is perfect. And yet, we do make complicated and poor choices along with those that exceed our expectations. Such is life.

What is our existence like with time’s problematic passage? Our once-ideal spouse might change and grow weary of us, or we alter and begin to value her less. Friendships are broken for what appear to be necessary reasons or because we fail to keep in contact.

Later, we may believe we should have done a better job at forgiveness or cementing the relationships we disposed of.

The globe alters as well, sometimes in ways beyond our imagination. Finding satisfying work involves endless learning about our profession, and career changes overtake us because of technological advances. Lifelong self-employed careers elude even MDs. Permanent employment by the same company is in shorter supply.

The planet can look like a meal of scrambled eggs, and we take the role of the eggs.

We need to be kind to ourselves. My career included professional contact with approximately 3000 people, evaluating patients on referral from other practitioners, and treating many of my own. I encountered no one who scored 100% at the game of life in or out of my office.

We are imperfect and prone to regret.

Learn, apologize, and forgive yourself.

Frank J. Peter, a thoughtful and provocative writer, recently posted a blog that included an important piece of wisdom offered by a man he met on a pilgrimage.

We look for answers in our lives, the better to inform our journey, but I think the wise man Frank met hit the bull’s eye when he said, “There are no answers, only choices.”

He called him Angel.

Learn, apologize, and forgive yourself. You were not and are not a prophet or prophetess.

Find love and love the least among us. Be kind. Take joy wherever you can find it. Be grateful for what life offers and pay it forward by repairing the world.

That is the best we can do. That is the best that can be done.

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The top photo is Forgiveness, the work of JamesInOregon. Next comes Forgiveness! by Carlos Latuff. Finally, Bruno created Human Redemption. All of these are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.