If you've put your hand to the plough, don't look back

LUKY
We make choices, aware of the limitation they impose upon us, and in later years chafe at these self-imposed restrictions.
To my mind, this is a luxury one shouldn't indulge in.
Once we have put our hand to the plough, we don't look back.
     Don't like our spouse?
How is it possible to grow tired of the person we loved most in all the world in the days when we were footloose and fancy-free?
As for leaving the spouse, let's not forget the holy vow sworn at the altar.
     Don't like our in-laws?
We married our spouse in the full knowledge that (s)he came fully equipped with the accessories of parents and siblings.
If we can't love them, at least we can go through the motions of affability for goodness' (and our spouse's) sake.

Don't like our job?
When we first landed it, it seemed to be the best move we ever made.
If we place ourselves back in time, we'll soon recall the attractions and benefits the vacancy seemed to offer when we applied for it.
     Don't like paying the money our children cost or the cheek they give us?
They didn't ask to be born
Having been instrumental in giving them life, we cannot renege on them.
Even if they (as one consequence of not heeding our advice) end up with brain damage, alcoholism, a motorbike injury, Aids or syphilis, they remain our offspring who should always be able to count on us for our support and our prayers.

Don't like our car and can't afford another?
Let's be grateful we have a car.
Many people all over the world have to foot it until death.
They'd give their eyeteeth to have any kind of vehicle at all to take them from A to B.
     Don't like ourselves?
We all know that feeling.
We can forgive others most of their faults, especially when we love them, but we re-live our own mistakes 
ad nauseam.
Why not be as tolerant with ourselves as we are with others?

Sometimes, looking back, one thinks if one could live one's life over again one might have made different choices.
However, we should not forget that the changes in taste we experience as the years go by are the result of an evolutionary process in our minds and circumstances.
     At fifty we are no longer the people we were at thirty or forty.
Life teaches us many lessons to which we adapt in preference to facing the morbid alternative.
     If God had put an old head on our shoulders when we were young, however, would we have dared to tackle a career, marry and bear children?
The wild oats many of us regrettably sowed put us on the way to discovering, albeit in the hard way, that the only way is the right way.
     Every single ideal one strives for imposes its own set of obligations, heartaches and disappointments.
Fortunately there is a great deal of laughter tied up with the sorrow.
     In old age when the leaves start falling off (relatives, hair, teeth, hearing, sight, mobility) it will be good to recall that we were sufficiently courageous to put our hand to the plough the Creator designed especially for us.

It will be even better if on that day we were able to recall with perfect truth that, having once done so, we never looked back.