You don't know that.

I get sad when I think about the future and the possibility of dementia in my family. Today I was having a self-pity moment, having a conversation with myself when a voice interrupted:

Sometimes I want to be selfish and today I am thinking…if dementia has a genetic link, why must MY parents be affected. Why not someone else in the family. But why would you think that? Because I think, my cousins are better equipped to handle something like this. They have accomplished more with their lives and their parents have had time to witness it. They are married, and now they have children and their parents get to enjoy being grandparents. Like I said, it’s a selfish thought. Do you not feel like you have accomplished anything? It’s not that, I find myself thinking, I should have done it differently. I should have made myself into someone who was more open to relationships, less fearful of commitment. I should have dated more when I was in college. I should have let myself meet someone, get married young and be settled down with a family. I could have made my life different. But I made you, and what I make is beautiful. I know. But now my mom may never know grandchildren, she will never feel that joy. You don’t know that.

And so I stopped talking, and I chose to smile and enjoy the beautiful sunset that I was missing. Because that is what it is all about. We let ourselves worry about things in the future, that aren’t even known to be true yet. We worry and we stress and we put ourselves down over things that we don’t even know are going to happen. We discount the beauty of all things that happened in the past and happening now in the present. “You don’t know that.” Four simple words to bring me back to the now, which is all I can, and need to know anything about. And at this moment, my now, my present, it is beautiful and all that it should be.