Damek.

People sometimes speak of repeating the errors of our parents, or make comments like, “You married your mother/father,” etc. In most cases, it’s just something people say, with little meaning. To the extent that anyone ever actually believes it, they’re most likely committing confirmation bias. I’m sure it does happen, sometimes, but for the most part I bet if most people looked truly enough, they’d see their S.O. was unique and special, sharing some characteristics with said parent only because they’re human, and humans share lots of common traits.

Sometimes I feel like, if there’s anyone my life is mirroring, it’s my Uncle Bob’s. To some extent, as I find myself ready to choose goals and reach for them, I’m consciously using him as a sort of model, but as I hardly knew him growing up it’s more a sort of idealized image than anything related to reality. Still, when I really pause to consider it, what I know of his life is really nothing like my own, though the interests in science and slightly “alternative” life paths are similar.

Either way, I like to think, by way of luck so far, and now by doing things my own way, using better tools (online tech, communities & advice, etc.), and with the perspective of the errors I’ve seen other people commit (in my families, those of people online, etc.), I can do things better.

Bless the Internet! So much information & discussion possible that never was in the past, allowing people to learn so much from the past and avoid so many errors, if they make proper use of it anyway. We don’t need to repeat the past and make the same mistakes everyone else makes if we’re prepared to recognize that our lives are not unique, everything we’re going through has confronted someone else at some point, and there’s probably something we can learn from that.

Still, shit does happen!