Tapestry revisited

I was thinking about a post that I wrote the other day. This is actually a post that had been rolling around in my head for more than a few years, with essentially the same arguments and conclusions as presented here. My thinking on this subject has been pretty consistent.

But a thought occurred to me: what if, instead of having the ability to change my own decisions, I had the ability to change decisions made by others?

Oh, hell, that's a whole different question. As much as I draw a blank when trying to come up with a list of things that I would have done differently (and there are a few, on further reflection), that's how powerfully the floodgates open when it comes to picking out decisions made by others that I'd like to see done differently.

Some of these are serious - if those two guys hadn't decided to burn down the apartment building, if 90% of the nursing staff hadn't been in the habit of taking smoke breaks together - but frankly, most of what I can think of involves women (and, in my earlier days, girls.) I would love to be able to set down with a dozen or so of them now and say, "Remember back in 1987 when you..." or "Having now seen how badly things worked out with Person X and Person Y, have you ever wondered..." or "If you realized (X) all those years ago, what might you have done differently?"

If I were to hop in a hypothetical time machine / persuasion amplifier to tweak all those decisions and actions made by women in my life that I feel could have been made better, or at least made better from my point of view, I think I would have to be very judicious in how many changes I might make. Or else things could get very complicated, very fast.

Some people don't need any hypothetical gadgetry to get this stuff done, at least not in the here and now. Some people are far more persuasive than others, and are able to bend, almost manipulate, the wills of others to actions that correspond to their own best interests.

So what decisions in the past would you have others make differently? If you could meet face-to-face with people whose decisions you would like to have been made differently, would you tell them? I am wondering what people might say to me that they would have liked me to do differently. How many things have I done that could have had more positive outcomes for others that I'm not even aware of? Could people even muster this level of honesty? And would people be willing to hear such things without becoming defensive?

I'm going to have to think about this. Asking this question of my friends - and directing it at myself - may provide me with dinnertime conversation topics for a long time to come.